Graflex.org

[Sjixxxy]

I'm rigging up a little piece of equipment with a hotshoe on in that I can stick into a Kalart Master Battery case so I can attach my Vivitar 283 right where a flahbulb would normally go. Just screwing around with my good Vivitar<->PC cable by attaching some loose wire to it, all I need to do is touch the two together to make the flash go off, but no matter how I try doing this by attaching wires to hotshoe, I can't get it to fire. Would someone be so kind as to explain how to wire up a hotshoe->bi-post cable? It would be convenient to just make a synch cable part of the device I'm making to mount the flash onto the old stick.

[45PSS]

Look closely at the bi post it has a large and small pin. If I remember the ones I worked on the large pin is connected to the case of the shutter,verifable with an ohm meter, and the small pin is connected to the timer switch contact that actually fires the flash if all is good. So connect the pin that is connected to the case of the shutter to the outer ring of the pc connector and the pin that is switched to the center contact on the pc connector. the outer ring of the pc connector is connected to the outer edge or frame of the hot shoe and the center connector is connected to the center contact on the hot shoe.
Shutters internal contacts corrode and tarnish just like any metal and must be cleaned regularly which invloves disassembly of the shutter. Copper was common and some used a silver coating which was worse for corrosion.
Charles

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[clnfrd]

I rigged something like this. The shoe I used was not hot...just solid metal. I insulated it so as not to disable the 283 by shorting it's hot foot contacts when inserting into the shoe. I spliced a Vivitar cable to a bi-post cable to make the connection from the 283 to the shutter. Paramount will make a Vivitar-to-bi-post cable if you want to pay the price. Fred.