Signaling Equipment

Site Issues 2007 Archive Room
#1

Hello,

Is here anybody else interested in the equipment of the Royal Corps of Signals?
I just received my third No. 19 Wireless set:


(borrowed from http://www.royalsignals.org.uk )

This piece of radio equipment was used in the infantry at company level and above, as well as in tanks and reconnaisance vehicles until the end of the Korean war.
It is actually two radio transceivers and one interphone amplifier in one case. One radio transceiver works in the VHF band, while the other one operates in the lower HF band (3.5 to 8.0 Megacycles).
With my three sets I’d like to get at least one working again. I can not use the VHF part anyway, since the frequencies today are being used by commercial radio stations, but the HF transceiver can be used in the 40 and 80 meter amateur radio bands.
The HF transceiver can operate either in CW (Morse code) mode, modulated CW (also Morse Code) or in AM for speech transmissions, though the range is largest in CW (I know some Canadians, who contacted Norway from Canada).

Jan

#2

As a current member of the Royal Corps, I’m very interested Jan!

I’ve seen the old kit before of course, in our Corps museum, but never had a chance to have a proper look inside it or to get hands on with it.

From the picture you’ve posted - is the main unit on the right the radio bit while the seperate looking bit on the left is an amplifier or are the different units for HF and VHF?

Using one radio for HF and VHF sounds pretty mad now!

#3

BDL,
The unit on the left is the power supply, in this case a No.2, like I have here at home. It converted either 12 V or 24 V DC into 500V DC and 250V DC by using a dynamotor, a small DC motor coupled with an AC generator. The AC output was then put through a transformer to increase the tension and rectified.
The big cable delivers the high voltage power plus 12 V DC for the heating of the tubes to the tranceiver (or sender/receiver, as they used to say back then). What you don’t see in this picture is a cylindrical unit often attached to the power supply, which contains a variable inductivity to bring the antenna in resonance with the HF power ampifier in the transceiver.
If you look at the transceiver, the right hand side are the controls for the HF set, especially the two big, round indicators for the tuning frequency (behind each is an adjustable capacitor, if I have a bit of time, I’ll take some pictures of the insides of my radios and post them), one for tuning both the receiver and transmitter circuits and one for the power amplifier.
Beneath the lefthand tuning wheel are three switches to switch the intercom, the VHF radio and the HF radio seperately on and off. The gauge is voltmeter / amperemeter used to check both the voltages from the power supply as well as the voltage and current output at the antenna to adjust the set properly. It also has a selector to select between the different modes of modulation, CW, MCW and R/T (AM voice).
To the left of the gauge is a small dial, which controls the tuning of the VHF set.
Audio frequency output came from the lower big socket on the tranceiver. Usually it would be connected to an intercom box, which provided jacks for microphones and headsets (different versions depending if the wireless set was being used alone or in a tank, where it acted as intercom as well). The morse key was plugged into a small jack right beside the output socket.

BTW, I’ve got one set working as a receiver. Since I don’t have an amateur radio operator licence yet, I didn’t try the transmit functions, but I received commercial radio broadcasts from Canada last night, loud and clear, also CW transmissions by radio hams in the 40 and 80 meter band.
I was using a simple 6 meter CB radio antenna, not a proper antenna for the frequencies required.

Jan

#4

Cheers for that Jan - the range you can get out of HF radio is amazing. I’ve heard stories of rad ops from our airborne brigade being able to contact their home base at Colchester from the USA using a manpack HF radio.

Variable units to ‘tune’ the antenna to the radio are still in use now - TUAAMs, SURFs and TURFs in Clansman, can’t remember what they’re called in BOWMAN.

#5

Hi

This is my first post on this forum. Yes I am interested in this equipment too. I have a Wireless Set 18 Mk III, a Wireless Set 19 MK III, a Wireless Set 22 and a Wireless Set 38, as well as various items of line signalling equipment. To be accurate, most of these sets were not Royal Signals (who tended to man equipment higher up the command chain) but were used by unit signallers. The 18 and 38 were infantry radios, also used in Royal Artillery units for comunication with infantry, the 22 was used in many units but was the backbone of artillery communications, and of course, the 19was originally intended for use by Royal Armoured Corps signallers in tanks. It was the most widely used set, being installed in numerous vehicles and even in command vehicles. It’s a huge and extremely interesting topic. My real interest is in artillery communications, and I have collected those four sets as they were the sets used by British and Canandian field artillery regiments in the 1943-45 period.

Rob