Alex
With regard to the decals applied to the front of the 19-Set, the wartime, and early 1950's RCEME Shop Rebuild manuals for the Set reference use of a decal sheet for redoing the transceiver face plate. The process was to strip the faceplate and repaint it the pale grey colour. A stencil was then placed over the plate. This stencil had cutouts on it locating the places where the luminous paint was applied. Next, the decals were applied over the appropriate patches of luminous paint. Finally, a clear coat varnish was applied over the whole face plate. There is some debate today as to whether or not this varnish was clear or tinted a slight yellow. I have a Mk III Cdn Set that had a mint, yellowish looking face plate and tried a little liquid car polish on the edge of it. The yellow came off and a nice bright grey showed up. I am assuming the yellow tint was the product of many years accumulation of cigarette smoke building up on the front of the set.
Initially, the replacement decal set was the original multi lingual version. At some point in the late 40's or 50's, an English only version came into use here in Canada. I don't know the exact date of that transition, but in all likelihood, old stocks were used up before the new ones came on line.
As for the Canada Decal, that seems to be uniquely a wartime production item. There is no reference to it being reapplied in subsequent rebuilds. It came in a great range of sizes, right up to a 6 or 8 inch version applied to doors of CMP's and sides of Carriers built in Canada during the war for export. I have even seen it applied to wooden shipping crates.
Just took a quick rummage in my manuals filing cabinet. If you are serious about overhauling a 19-Set, the manual to track down is the Canadian Army EME Instructions Manual - Telecommunications F 254/3. Later versions were renamed - Electrical F 254/3. I have seen copies of it dated from 1944 all the way up to 1957. It's the bible for these sets. The fancy title for the manual is: WIRELESS SET CANADIAN No. 19 Mk III, 2nd - 4th ECHELON WORK
Interestingly, the very first section of the manual lists the Test Equipment needed to completely overhaul and tune the 19-Set. The types of equipment stay the same over time, but the models of each change as better test sets were developed. Between a friend of mine and me, we have a fairly extensive collection of test equipment from the 1940's through to today. A number of years back, we took a 19-Set Mk III and tuned it according to the above noted manual using nearly all wartime test equipment. We got a very good response from the set. We then retuned the set to the specs in the manual using the most modern test equipment available to us. The improvement in the performance of the 19-Set was amazing! An observation for what it is worth.
David
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