Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

Been communicating recently with the Canadian Army Directorate of History (DHH) in Ottawa about the 52-Set. They can find nothing in their archives at all by way of a comprehensive set of repair and rebuild instructions. Nor is there anything suggesting work of such nature was or was not carried out by Canadian Marconi.

However, they did discover a great deal of 52-Set information is scattered around the LAC files that takes a bit of creative searching to track down. Topics like 'wireless' and '52' and anything else you can think of are worth trying. On line that can get you to files which one can then order copies of from the LAC.

A couple found are as follows:

"Standardization - Materiel - Ground Radios - Cdn Wireless Set 52 - United States Radio Set AN-GRC-19, - United Kingdom Wireless Set C-11"

Not sure what those three sets have in common, but an interesting grouping.

The other item was:

"Equipment and stores - Design Development and Research Project 1958 - Truck utility 1/4-ton M38 Canadian - installation of Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian and Ground Station"

Yikes! The poor ass end on that jeep would have been dragging like an overloaded classic VW Beetle!


David

[David Dunlop]

Been looking through the manual to try and identify the single conductor cable that runs from the Receiver, up through a series of eyebolts along the top of the three main components and into the Sender, to allow these two items to play well together.

Can anyone confirm that I have got it right with the above title? Probably going to have to track one of these cables down, sooner or later.

David

[Colin Alford]

David,

Here is a link to the CMHQ London files that were compiled on the Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian.

This link should get you to the first page and then you will have a lot of clicking to do to get through the hundreds of pages. Hopefully you will find some interesting information.

http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oo...7/1063?r=0&s=1

Regards,
Colin

[cmp truck]

Colin,
You have to buy a subscription to these archives.
Do you have a subscription and do you find it valuable?
The obvious usage would be material on vehicles and radios especially manuals and technical orders.
Regards,
Ian
VA6SSV

[Bruce MacMillan]

You don't need a subscription to browse the files. The subscription gives you a search function. I did buy a month's worth of time to see if was worth it but their indexing isn't very good. Colin's link has a lot of wireless info and if you're insomniac there's almost 6000 pages in that file to go through. That is only one of several hundred files. Some of it is interesting.

There is also info in these files on military vehicle design & procurement.

[Colin Alford]

Ian,

As Bruce mentioned, you do not require a subscription to view the files.

The subscription contributes to the project of digitizing the files and hosting them on-line and it allows for full text searching of those files which have this function enabled. Unfortunately so far none of the military files have the text searching function enabled.

I do not have a subscription and I find the information available extremely valuable. The problem is that it takes a long time to find the files that are of interest and then a very long time to click through and read each of the images to discover the information.

Colin

[David Dunlop]

Ian, I would be quite surprised to find manuals and that sort of material in this 52-Set file. It is basically a correspondence file holding the letters and telegrams etc that dealt with design, production and supply issues of the set. And as Colin and Bruce pointed out, it is a huge file with no sort capability.

I did notice a chronological order to a section I poked into but that may not relate to the entire file, just the small block I happened to be looking at perhaps.

As luck would have it, the topic of discussion happened to be the failure of the dynamotors. Only 10% of a very large sample had failed outright and it was determined not to have been overheating. They had narrowed the problem down to a significant fluctuation in the 12 volt input voltage which the dynamotors could not handle over prolonged periods. Efforts were being made to divert sets from a pending shipment to the Canadian Army to Marconi so they could investigate further, regarding this voltage instability. The Marconi address was odd. Possibly the operation in England.

David

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

Been looking through the manual to try and identify the single conductor cable that runs from the Receiver, up through a series of eyebolts along the top of the three main components and into the Sender, to allow these two items to play well together.

Can anyone confirm that I have got it right with the above title? Probably going to have to track one of these cables down, sooner or later.

David

Ah, now I was R-ing TFM in an idle moment and thought "that will be in the Identification List", and so it is. (It also gives you enough description to make one up if you so desire.)

-----------------------------------------

LEADS, Aerial, 25.3/4-in lg, No.C1

No.16 B&S stranded wire, rubber covered to 7mm dia; metal sleeve and tip on each end; early parts were wrongly labelled "LEADS, Aerial, No. C7 -- ZA/C 00105"; this label should be ignored.

NOTE: Spares are available for this item although not shown in station spare parts list.

ZA/CAN 4703

-----------------------------------------

(Page 5 of FZ526, which has an illustration of the item - showing the incorrect label!)

Best regards,
Chris. (Still looking for valveholders - but there's a radio rally on Sunday so I might have more luck there. I have found two B7 sockets but they're the fragile Paxolin type, I'd prefer the moulded variety.)

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

A couple found are as follows:

"Standardization - Materiel - Ground Radios - Cdn Wireless Set 52 - United States Radio Set AN-GRC-19, - United Kingdom Wireless Set C-11"

Not sure what those three sets have in common, but an interesting grouping.
David

Those are the "Role" sets for "Rear Link" operation by Signals personnel, I think:

Canada - WS52
USA - AN/GRC-19
UK - C11/R210 (replacing the WS19HP and/or WS52)

Chris.