Live chassis.

[Mike Watterson]

Based on all that, I'd guess that you bought something other than a TX9. I did see occasional mentions of an earlier Ferguson colour portable, which apparently uses an imported chassis. No-doubt someone else will know more about that.

Curious.
My mum gave me back the set in 1991 or 1992. We had it going till about 2005 when the pushbuttons / tuning tray became unusable and so it went to recycling. I certainly thought I bought in Belfast wholesale about 1976.

Obviously in 1981 or 1982 when we bought TX10s and also isolated B&W sets without CRTs I erroneously thought it was a TX9.

Single PCB in bottom of case with two cut off corners. Looking at back a largish inductor/transformer thing with thyristors beside it on the left.

The tuning control panel was a pop out tray on top right front with maybe 6 presets. Black speaker grill, black plastic rear cover and white case. Only valve was CRT.

It seemed to have lost a lot of gain on green on CRT when I got it in 1991 or 1992 from mum so I modified the circuit at the green video drive to get decent colour balance again. By then Limerick was served with wholly UHF from local Woodcock Hill in Co. Clare. Prior to that all of Limerick city was fringe reception on VHF for RTE 1 & RTE 2 from Maghera or Mullaganish (one entirely Band III, the other 1 & 3) with TnaG on UHF. Later TnaG was TG4 when TV3 eventually started. The Band I 625 closed in 1999 and the Band III 626 and all UHF 625 closed in 2012 (Analogue shutdown). Local DTT is x10 power that Analogue was.

Edit: Nearly sure it was 16″, but sadly "Ferguson Colourstar" is less use than "Ford Cortina" or "Ford Anglia", both of which cover very different generations of models.