Wireless of the Week - week 2

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Week two is hopefully more to Mike Kelly's taste. The Wireless Set No.62 has a wartime history, is associated with airborne troops and is perhaps one of the prettiest radios out there.

Developed in 1944, 62 sets saw service at the end of the war in Europe and the Far East with army, airborne and SAS troops. It was a replacement for the earlier No.22 set and was generally intended as a vehicle mounted radio but was also used as a man pack, carried by mules and in aircraft. Early sets had a web harness similar to that on the No.18 set but later ones had a revised harness system when it was discovered the early one was too bulky to fit in parachute jump bags. The set served for a long time post war and a version was sold to the civilian market.

Frequency range was a little wider than the 19 set, being from 1.6 to 10 megahertz. Range was 15 miles voice and 25 miles on CW. The set ran on 12 volts and had an internal power supply unit unlike the earlier No.22 set which had a separate one. The 62 set floated and could be immersed in water for up to 5 minutes.

A Crystal Calibrator No.10 was used to accurately set the frequency.

The first photo shows a No.62 Mk.II set with the 'airborne' harness and the second a No.62 (no mark) set with the earlier harness (that is being repaired after Bubba decided to flatten it).

[Mike Kelly]

I have owned a few 62 sets , a neat set .

All of the 62 sets I have seen here have a plate on them dated 1956 and PYE Victoria . I have always said that these sets found in Aust. are British sets that were rebuilt here by PYE . PYE had a factory in Melbourne and they designed their own radios .

Anyway, my friend VK5WT is adamant that these 62 sets were manufactured here from scratch in 1956 . This theory doesn't add up - why on earth would the Govt. spend a fortune on setting up dies and machinery to manufacture a , basically obsolete set ? The valves in the sets are British origin .

A common fault is the genemotor burns out, they designed a solid state power supply unit at some point in time. The CMF ( army reserve ) were still using 62 sets in the early 1960's . The set could tune onto the high end of the AM broadcast band and a CMF member told me they once caused havoc by using a frequency in the braodcast band by mistake .

I have the 1956 dated manual , showing the 62 set installation in WW2 Jeeps on issue to the Aust. army . Before they changed over to Land Rovers

Aussie disposals had the crystal cal units for 5 bucks . I had quite a few of the remote control units as well

[Chris Suslowicz]

There was a Mk.6 version of the WS62 that could be run (silently) from three WS31 dry batteries via an adapter. It was necessary to rotate the batteries between the three connectors in order to equalise the usage of the various sections. This was mainly intended for jungle use (I think) with limited radio use on fixed schedules and for the early stages of airborne operations.

There was also a 60 watt pedal-driven generator for recharging the standard accumulators used with the set: 12 volt 22AH or the lighter 14AH unit. Other options were the 12V 75AH battery, or pairs of 6V batteries with a different power lead (ending in two Niphan plugs).

The early protective cover for the front panel only had a couple of stiffeners and the later version (I think) increased this to four in order to protect against knocks.

Be warned that the dials are "lumenised" with radium paint, though the army may have cleaned them up in later years. (I heard that a lot of sets were crushed and buried rather than being sold off as surplus in the U.K. due to the luminous paint problem.)

Operator lamp is No.6B, and there was supposedly an ultraviolet filtered version, possibly for aircraft use, which I've never seen - that would have been for non-radioactive luminous paint versions.

Aerials were the "strung on a wire" type, 4-FT No.1 and No.2 (allowing 4 or 8 ft options) as used with the WS38 Mk.3, and a 14-ft collapsible whip. There was also the 100-ft No.5 wire aerial (selectable via links to give 25, 45, 75 or 100 foot options) and the 32-ft steel mast (basically the 34-ft steel vertical aerial made from Aerial Rods 'D' but with the 14-ft whip on top instead of using the earlier 'F' rods - with the advantage of not requiring the 'F' rod steel tube carrier).

Earth was usually the Lead, Counterpoise No.2 when used with the wire aerial of the 32-ft mast.

The rotary transformer (by a variety of manufacturers including Hoover, Newton Bros, Frigidaire Ltd. and possibly Black & Decker) had a design life of 500 hours. Some of the brushes and bearings, etc. are specific to a particular manufacturer. The short lifespan of the supply unit compared to the set (not to mention the audible noise level) led to the transistorised replacement.

Chris.

[Mike Kelly]

I attended a hamfest today and by coincidence I picked up a neat publication .

The EMEI ( Aust.) , Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Instructions , a loose leaf folder of around 200 pages that contains the details of the telecommunications equipment issued to the Army and Navy here , it is circa mid 1950's to early 1960's .

The 62 set is listed as is the 19 set . The 19 set nomenclature is : Wireless set No.19 , Mk2 ( Aust ) /2 . A short sentence from the description " The equipment was originally the British WS 19 MK II - it was rebuilt by TEHNICO in 1952-53 "

Another thing I discovered from the EMIE is the late WW2 made 133 set , a 300 Watt transmitter made by AWA , was reissued for training purposes in 1958 . It was declared obsolete , then reissued!

[Chris Suslowicz]

Originally Posted by Mike Kelly

I attended a hamfest today and by coincidence I picked up a neat publication .

The EMEI ( Aust.) , Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Instructions , a loose leaf folder of around 200 pages that contains the details of the telecommunications equipment issued to the Army and Navy here , it is circa mid 1950's to early 1960's .

The 62 set is listed as is the 19 set . The 19 set nomenclature is : Wireless set No.19 , Mk2 ( Aust ) /2 . A short sentence from the description " The equipment was originally the British WS 19 MK II - it was rebuilt by TEHNICO in 1952-53 "

Another thing I discovered from the EMIE is the late WW2 made 133 set , a 300 Watt transmitter made by AWA , was reissued for training purposes in 1958 . It was declared obsolete , then reissued!

A lot of the Australian built sets were copies (suitably modified for local component availability) of the equivalent British set and were given equivalent numbers in the 100 range to avoid confusion. (e.g. WS101 was a locally built WS1.) That would make the 133 set a copy of the WS33, which was superseded by the WS53 (itself developed from the WS12 High Power).

There were locally developed sets with other designations, such as the A510, and a planned replacement for the WS53 that was fully sealed and "tropic proof" - the WS163 - but the limited production of that one never went into service.

Obsolete sets were traditionally reissued for training purposes (where suitable), and remained in that service until the supply of spares ran out.
(e.g. the UK Cadet Force had the WS12 & R107 in use well into the 1970s until the stocks of the P.A. valve (ATS35, custom to STC and without any real equivalent) were exhausted. As sets broke down, they were replaced by something a little more modern - the WS12/R107 became a WS12/Eddystone 730/4 after the R107 power supply went up in smoke.

The last digit of the WW2-era sets refers (with a few exceptions) to the role of the set - the lower the number, the closer you were to the front line. The next digit was the "version" of the set for that role. (This was a vast improvement over adding "*" to indicate modifications, and changing the whole name of the set, as was done earlier.)

Wireless Set No.1 - Battalion to Brigade (Later WS 11 and WS21)
Wireless Set No.2 - Brigade to Division (Later WS12)
Wireless Set No.3 - Division to Corps (Later WS 23, 33, C43, 12HP and 53)
Wireless Set No.4 - Corps to Army (abandoned)
Wireless Set No.5 - GHQ to Home
Wireless Set No.6 - Army Chain (three were built: Aldershot, Gibraltar and Hong Kong)

5 and 6 ended up being merged into one category, and used the No.5 HP set, various commercial transmitters (Marconi SWB 8E and 11E), WS 63 (transportable), and WS15 (which arrived too late for WW2 and eventually became Transmitter E10).

Wireless Set No.7 was an early inter-AFV set
Wireless Set No.8 - Infantry man-portable set (8, 18, 38, 48, 58, 68, 78 & 88)
Wireless Set No.9 - AFV (9, 19, 29) but the 9 was too big for most purposes and the Canadian redesign as WS52 put it firmly into the "rear link" and "mobile high power set" role. like the WS12.

Chris.

[David Dunlop]

Chris.

Great information on the wireless numbering system. Had no clue about this at all over the years and have been happily assuming the numbering simply started at '1' and worked it's way on up.

Must hurry up and find a new printer so I can copy your post for my files.

Cheers,


David