Transmitter Truck

Transmitter Truck
Type	Mobile, pulse signal transmitter
Affiliation	International Rescue
Top Speed	Unknown
Main Operator	Virgil Tracy Brains
Appearances	Sun Probe Cry Wolf (cameo)

The Transmitter Truck is a Pod vehicle featured in the episode Sun Probe.

Design

The Transmitter Truck is a blue-coloured caterpillar-tracked vehicle with an attached Jodrell-Six multi-use antenna dish. The dish can transmit frequencies capable of controlling a spacecraft's operating systems to accomplish various things, such as activating its retros. The truck's cabin has two doors. One is located above the left-side front caterpillar track; the other is located at the rear of the cabin and is used to reach the generator housing area. The cabin is pressurised, making the truck a very versatile vehicle, usable even in areas with very little air, such as high mountains. The fuel tank is at the back left part of the truck. The dish is aided with a data amplification booster and a data processing unit. When the transmitter truck's dish is transmitting, the dish's tip glows, similar to a lit candle. The dish has a ladder leading up to its turntable so maintenance can be performed.

Gallery

Brains and Virgil inside the Transmitter Truck

Virgil Tracy at the controls

Safety beam transmitting.

Braman inside the wrong box inside Pod 6

The Transmitter truck inside the storage bay

Sun Probe

When the Sun Probe rocket is unable to pull away from the Sun, Brains realizes that a powerful radio beam is needed to fire the Probe's retros, which have jammed due to the heat of the Sun. With arguments being made in favour of using the Transmitter Truck from Earth and Thunderbird 3 travelling into space, Jeff Tracy decides to mount a two-pronged rescue after Gordon notes that both options have equal chances of success. Virgil flies Thunderbird 2 to Mount Arkan in the Himalayas so that beams from the powerful mobile transmitter will have a better chance of reaching the Sun Probe from high up the mountain. While Thunderbird 3 was able to save the Sun Probe, the Transmitter Truck was then required to remotely deactivate Thunderbird 3's transmitter and fire its retro-rockets when Scott, Alan and Tin-Tin passed out from the heat before they could do it themselves.

The Transmitter Truck ready to leave the pod for operation

"We're well clear of Thunderbird."

Getting a bit stuck

Another view

Lining up the dish

Saving Thunderbird 3

The Transmitter Truck in operation

Cutaway Drawings

As far as is known, only two cutaway drawings of the transmitter truck exist. Both were illustrated by Graham Bleathman. The first appeared in a Redan comic, and the other featured in the Haynes Thunderbirds manual.

Main article: History of the Cutaway Drawings (Classic Thunderbirds)

Redan edition

Haynes edition

Trivia

The Transmitter Truck in Dateline 2066

• The transmitter truck is a modified Scarab Tractor-Cat.
• The model used for the Transmitter Truck would later appear in issue 61 of TV Century 21, in a Dateline 2066 article in which thieves use an advanced laser cutter device to rob the National Bank of England.