New Stock for the War & Fleece shop

Originally posted by dougiebarder
" It was all there broadly but would have been a huge task to do it properly and generally these things are rare as they do tend to defeat all but the most persistent, experienced people.."

I got the feeling that might have been the case. I really don't know enough about older vehicles-my theory is that the only way you really get to know is buy one and make all the mistakes.

As for the radio licence, I did check out the radio society of Great Britain a while back, but didn't get any further(which is pretty dumb as I did a fair amount of comm's theory when I was in college)-I'll have to bite the bullet and book a course. Out of intrest, do your and your wife use older military sets, or more modern one's?

OK, I don't believe its older vehicles per se, many types are so popular and abundant, relatively speaking, that info and spares are easy, certainly the US types. M-Cs are somewhat esoteric and certainly rare, the early types were almost all lost at Dunkirk and then used in small numbers as specialist rather than GS vehicles, like the compressor truck which is a CS8 basically. Apart from the later artillery tractors still made, the designs were 30's really and 15 cwt trucks perhaps were a mistake being little more than runabouts in the grander scale of things.

There are some real dogs around that still keep running, to their credit, but a restoration of one of these isn't easy, you really need to know your stuff and what civvy parts, to be found in that sphere, are common, plus a background of collecting little gems over the years as they appear.

I will admit to being spoilt though, having spent years watching RB make a rough but running PU into a pile of individual parts and then re-build/re-make it as new; it helps having a tool-maker as a father and being a very competent joiner too with a huge pile of seasoned ash planks to work with. I'm watching the CDSW similarly and even so the bottom line ends up as a four figure sum without counting the hours. Our resident M-C fan in the shape of Mike K may well confirm and he has sourced parts from the Ballard collection, long way to go for a bit. Well, you know how many turn up at Beltring, which is a good yardstick.

Radio, or wireless as I still prefer it. It is my profession from training and formal qualifications at GCHQ (the latter-day Bletchley Park) in the mid/late 60's, then 18 years at Marconi on guided weapons and torpedoes, to now scratching about running a weeny commercial radio comms business. I used to operate old army sets years ago (the licence is 1970) but for the last 25years doing it all day tends to kill the appetite for doing more afterwards, hence a penchant for old army trucks perhaps.

Mrs Notton used to work for a major "ham" supplier years ago who has now withdrawn from that market (SMC), she did the RAE as it seemed pertinent to the job although she worked on the commercial/business radio side of things, hence our meeting actually. Neither of us has used ham radio for many a year and then its been on reciprocal licences in the States in the pre-roaming cellphone days.

Your Clansman was designed and developed at Marconi - Browns Lane by Paul Dent (G3VEL) whilst I was there and I've had many contacts with Paul using one on 4M since they were allocated 70.25MHz for air testing and 70.26MHz was the national mobile calling freq, idly thumbing through some dusty log books I see we worked a prototype Clansman on 19/12/71 - 1545 to 1600 GMT.

There is an active Clansman list on Yahoogroups Clansman list clansman_larkspur@yahoogroups.com and I would encourage you to think about a ham licence; I have to work with the field officers of the new OFCOM (formerly the Radiocommunications Agency) and they do know all about the military shows and people with operating and operational kit. One day the axe will fall, it has been an offence for some time now to have possession of operational transmitters without a licence. The law allows them to confiscate the power supply too and if this is a battery charged by the alternator and thus the engine, then the vehicle goes too!!!

In some 5 years or so, when the sunspot peak returns and thus some decent propagation, I shall fire up the PU 11set on CW and see if we can raise Mike K (VK3CZ) down under using the ground antenna, counterpoise and the correct tuner; probably have the cell-phone on the other ear though for talk-back, if you _really_ want to talk to someone use the phone!!!

One of my Morse tutors was an old boy at Marconi; a boy entrant in the RN shortly after WWI when transmitters had rotary spark wheels and you knew the ship by its growling Morse note; the days when the code safe had to be hand carried every watch to the bridge and checked by the officer of the watch. Not only did Nobby Clarke make such excellent and easy Morse he could read lights, and semaphore of course, "front" or "back" as a Leading Tel/air gunner.

Probably long gone now, but he did have an accredited ME109 destroyed using a Vickers K gun from the side window of a Walrus.

Apparently in the middle of a long, tediously hand encoded report, shafts of light started to appear in the wireless position through the fuselage skin and shards of wood were disappearing from the wireless desk; in somewhat of high dudgeon with the prospect of re-encrypting the report, the 109 was espied from the dorsal square window, this was duly shipped and the K gun mounted resulting in the 109 to be seen trailing smoke and glycol heading directly for the Mediterranean.

The other job for the wireless operator was to catch and attach the crane hook during recovery alongside, a rather fraught operation bobbing on the sea since the pilot would not stop the engine until hoisted clear of the water; can be clearly seen here http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/Aircraft/Walrus.htm

R.