Flash Clinic recommended to use the A-Packs with slaves or to take them out of service, and to trigger with my newer units. It was`nt worth the trouble with the old packs, because they were too old.
In the meantime I found out that if the trigger cable between the PW and the A2400 is very long (in my test 5 meters), it works flawless. The PW can be on top of the power pack, only the trigger cable has to be that long.
This gives me room for ideas, like for a custom made adapter using a miniaturized spool with some meters of copper wire.
Best,
Bernd
P.S.1: Ellis, I´ll forward your last post to GM-Foto in Frankfurt. They`ll be proud to hear that.
P.S2.: And here is what PocketWizard Support wrote to me (as of march 22):
Hi Bernd,
That's definitely very strange. While I don't have a Balcar A1200 or A2400 here, I have a few points of suspicion:
The first thing that I think about is the triggering voltage. Older packs can range up into the hundreds of volts; during the development of our Plus III we made sure to pay extra attention to the triggering voltage as some packs (like the Speedotron Blackline packs, or Norman B200, or even the Vivitar 283) can range up into the 250+ sync voltage. That being said, a wein safe sync should help; I'm not entirely sure.
The second is that the trigger circuit in those packs is slightly different than other flash packs or monolights, and because of that, the way that most radio triggers trigger from their ports isn't working with the sync port on the flash. It gets very technical, and even with an engineer pointing to a diagram of the circuitry inside the triggering circuit I was barely keeping up, but basically, the flash pack is expecting one thing, and the triggering circuit is designed to give something that's just barely not in spec, so it doesn't fire.
While I can't give you anything definitive, I would actually suggest trying one of our Plus IIIs as a receiver on your A1200 and A2400 packs. I'm not entirely sure it will be anything different, but I do know that we've done a lot of work on getting the sync circuit simplified, so it may offer better results (and it also has fast mode as well!)
I wish I could give you a more concrete answer, but this is the first time I've heard of this problem, and I don't have the packs here to test with, so unfortunately the best I can give you is an educated guess. If in your testing you discover anything further, any further information would be greatly appreciated.
If you have any further questions, feel free to let me know - just reply to this email and keep the case number in the subject line.
Chris Valites
PocketWizard Technical Support Specialist
LPA Design
21 Gregory Drive
Suite 140
South Burlington, VT 05403