Wireless Set No. 52 Canadian - Project

[David Dunlop]

General Motors of Canada was struggling to get the newly developed C15TA Armoured Truck delivered to the Canadian Army about the same time as Canadian Marconi was working on initial deliveries of the Wireless Set No. 52. There was no hope of getting an Installation Kit developed for the 52-Set into the C15TA, which was replacing the White Scout Car FFW, so the Canadian Army developed a set of Field Installation Instructions for fitting pairs of the 52-Set and the 19-Set HP into the C15TA from metal stocks available in workshops overseas. These instructions were developed early on in the 52-Set production run and it was surprising to notice that the Lift the Dot fasteners used across the top of the Curtains, Waterproof on the 52-Set were nickel plated, not Matt Black as I suspected they would be.

The first photo today shows these nickel plated fasteners clearly on the right half of the curtain, the one dead centre below the Coil, Aerial Tuning in particular. Somewhere, I have another photo showing quite a bit of reflection off all five of these fasteners but cannot find it at the moment. The price I pay for having several thousand photos scattered across three computers, two large memory sticks, a digital camera and two camera memory cards. Consolidation is ongoing but nowhere near complete.

In any event, the nickel plated hardware did not make much sense, and I wondered if the name change in production from Curtain, Waterproof to Covers, Waterproof might have been done when CMC realized the mistake in hardware and switched production to Matt black. I got in touch with known 52-Set owners in Canada to see if they had these canvas items and asked for photos of the front markings and hardware to see what might turn up. Only three survivors so far, all the early marked ‘Curtain’ issue. Two down in Southern Ontario both have nickel plated fasteners. What was really interesting, however, was a third original curtain showed up in Alberta with Matt Black fasteners. So it may turn out that if any Covers have survived, they should all be equipped with Matt black fasteners.

I will let you know what turns up.



David