Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

Hello John.

I am not sure how much help I can be for you and your friend, but I have copied your post into a new topic on the M170 in the Post-war Military Vehicles Thread where there are a lot more knowledgable people on this particular topic.

You might also want to look at the M38A1CDN2 Antenna Mast Assembly Thread under the same section of the Forum. It deals with some of the issues you raised as well.

David

[David Dunlop]

The BAND Selector Switch in the upper right section of the Sender front panel appears to be the only user of this particular KNOBS on the entire 52-Set. Nor does it appear on any of the CMC built earlier No. 9 Wireless Sets. It may be unique to the 52-Set, but it is still possible Canadian Marconi was using it on one of the wireless sets built by their Marine Division.

In any event, it is a 3-Wing Knob with the lower wing that points down towards the curved Band Decal, being the longest of the three wings. It is also the wing, therefore, that has a deep groove cut into the tip of it, which was originally filled with green luminous paint. Only a few bits of it remain today.

The KNOBS mounts on a typical D-shaft, with a central, countersunk, slot-head screw, and a slot-head grub screw, directly behind the long wing, locking it onto the Band Selector Shaft. The second photograph shows the grub screw hole and also the depth of the groove at the tip of the long wing, top dead centre.

I have decided once this KNOBS has been cleaned up, I am going to wipe a single coat of flat white enamel into the groove to provide suitable reflective background, and then infill the groove with one or more layers of natural luminous green paint. That should get me pretty close to an original look. Then I will deal with the remaining knobs.

The only small wrinkle to this work is my supply of flat white enamel. I have a 13 oz spray can of the stuff, but for what I need for the job at hand, the amount of wastage to spray some into a small container for one brief dip of a fine tip paintbrush made no sense to me. But I was out of any ¼-oz jars of Testor’s Flat White Model Paint. THAT became an interesting exercise this past week!

Model supplies are non-essential at the moment here in Winnipeg and the shops locked down. On-line purchasing was another challenge. I was finding most places were out of stock, or showing a discontinued status, or showed on line they carried the brand but no details as to what was actually in stock. Checking on-line also showed some interesting News Reports from about a year ago that the company that bought Testor’s a few years ago was shutting the brand down for some unknown reason.
I eventually remembered a Model Supply shop in Calgary I had dealt with a number of years ago and tracked them down on line. 15 pages of Testor’s products were available and after looking through them all, I found the ½-oz bottle of flat whit enamel in stock, along with a shade of red gloss, and blue gloss enamels I had forgotten I would soon need for this project, so I ordered a ¼-oz bottle of them as well. Once here, I will finish off this KNOBS for reinstallation.

David

[David Dunlop]

While waiting for the paints I ordered to arrive, I decided to finish up the cleaning of the Sender chassis frame.

If you look back to Page 7, Post #207 of this thread, you will get a pretty good idea of just how much post-service crud had accumulated on this Sender, and the one small section of plate I had cleaned back then on the top chassis framework. At that point, most of the interior had been cleaned, with really the three big phenolic tuning coils, and the lower chassis floor level, down around the base of the 813 Valve left to deal with before I broke away from that part of the project. What looked bad then, looks positively hideous now, with the refurbished front panel taking shape so well.

The cleaning of the top chassis rails last evening was nothing more than a careful brush with a brass bristle tooth brush. It raised lots of questionable dust, so a mask is definitely needed for this work.

Should keep me out of mischief for a bit longer.

David

[David Dunlop]

The latter part of this morning was spent cleaning up the right and left side chassis rails, along with the rear rails and the two 8-Pin Socket Assemblies.

Just the lower chassis shelf to clean now, along with the two PA LOADING Coils. I have to think about the approach to that a bit. I have a suitable spray cleaner that can get in there and lift/float the greasy soot loose, and it is a water-soluble cleaner. The bit I am unsure of at the moment is how best to get the water rinse applied and wiped up.

If you look at the last photo posted today, inboard of the Tuning Capacitor at the left, and the Tube Shield on the right, you can clearly see the area of the lower chassis shelf where the greasy soot is still sitting and how thick it is. Two cleaning spray sessions are not out of the question yet!

David

[David Dunlop]

This KNOBS assembly has now been cleaned and polished. More of the indicator paint had survived under the dirt than I had expected, but it is not showing any signs of being luminous. It could either have simply grown old and failed, or it was not luminous to start with, but I suspect the former.

The greasy soot had even infiltrated under this KNOBS assembly onto the switch shaft itself, so it received a cleaning as well and now the KNOBS is a nice snug fit sliding both on and off the shaft.

I will redo the luminous paint when the flat white arrives next week.

David

[David Dunlop]

The fact that none of the three COIL, AERIAL TUNING UNIT No. 2A’s I have owned over the years have ever had any trace at all of a ‘Canada Decal’ on the front panel of them has always puzzled me .All three units had been overhauled at the Shop Level at some point post-war, and white bordered, none luminous decals had been applied to them, so I just assumed the original Canada Decals had been lost in the overhaul work.

I started thinking about this last weekend again and wondered if any early war photos of the 52-Set in service would ever turn up showing the COIL Assembly with a Canada Decal somewhere on the front of it, to solve the mystery once and for all. Then I remembered the early 1944 evaluation of the C15TA, to determine what was needed for it to fit inside a Hamilcar Glider. That evaluation had also included a study of the installations of both the Wireless Set No. 52 and the Wireless Set No. 19 HP Canadian in the C15TA. A three in one evaluation as it were.

I pulled my copy of that evaluation and went through the photos of the installed 52-Set. Bingo! There it was, a full front photo of the complete set installed along the right rear side of the C15TA.

The Canada Decal on the Receiver was obscured by the droop in the rolled up waterproof cover along the top of the Carriers No. 4. The Canada Decal on the Supply Unit can just be seen sticking up from behind the large square power plug near the bottom of the Supply, and the Canada Decal can be clearly seen, just to the right of the Access Door Hinge upper right corner. No Canada Decal at all can be seen anywhere on the COIL, AERIAL TUNING UNIT No. 2A. So clearly, these Coils never got Canada Decals, either by deliberate intent for some as yet unknown reason, or perhaps more likely, simple mistaken oversight. The end result is the same at this point; I no longer have to be concerned about adding one to my Coil assembly. Just to be on the safe side, I checked the illustrations of all four components in the Master Parts Lists. No Canada Decal on the COIL front panel there either, but the other three are all clearly noted,

The other interesting thing with this photo is the rolled up Waterproof Curtain. It is described in the Master Parts Lists as being Olive Green in colour. This colour to my mind’s eye has always been a very dark shade of green as commonly seen on a lot of post war military vehicles. On that basis, the Waterproof Cover should jump right out at you in a photograph when beside the No. 2 Brown wrinkle finish noted to be the standard colour for the 52-Set Carriers No. 4 in the Parts Lists. Not so in the photo attached. The rolled up curtain definitely has a darker tone than the metalwork of the Carriers No. 4, but not even close to what I expected. Then I remembered wartime CMP colors and that the light green colour used for them was often referred to either as Khaki Green, or Olive Green and the look they both referred to was very much like your typical pimento stuffed green pickled olives you find in a store today. With that in mind, the contrast between the rolled up curtain and the Carriers No. 4 metalwork in this photo makes much more sense to me. Hopefully, that lighter Olive Green canvas duck is still available today.

David

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

I'd say brown. Not sure how well the camera/computer is showing it.