fv1609

Posting them here? Thats an ineresting point, but I imagine a condition is that the mag assumes copyright so that meanies can't just look online & not buy the mag :wink:

Jack Well done, at least you have a sounding board here amongst your friends. I think those mags are good to draw people into the hobby. What I found difficult in the early days was seeing MVs on display & not knowing how to get involved. The people displaying all seemed to be wrapped up in themselves & there was no bridge from novice to seasoned expert. Even the first show I ever took with my Land Rover ambulance to, no other exhibitors would speak to me, they were all in huddles wrapped up in themselves. I felt so out of it that my first Southsea show I parked my Lightweight Land Rover in the public carpark given the earlier apathy/hostility. I was mighty relieved as amongst the hundreds of vehicles there was only ONE Land Rover on display! So anything that breaks down barriers like these mags is a good idea. Then later people can join clubs if they feel the hobby is for them. But it is a big step to join a club & pay £20-£25 for something that may not turn out to be a hobby of interest. But these mags can be bought on a one off basis & hopefully kindle an interest particularly if there is a helping hand from someone with a blossoming enthusiasm. As it often seems to the public that everyone showing a vehicle has been doing it for years & very intimidating feeling your way into the hobby. Best of luck

There are guidelines in Camouflage - Disruptive Painting of Vehicles, Military Training Pamphlet No.20. 1939 For average European backgrounds Basic colour: Khaki Green No.3 Disruptive colour: Dark Green No.4 For lighter backgrounds Basic colour: Light Green No.5 Disruptive colour: Khaki Green No.3 More than two colours could be used but no details were given, other than letting the previous coats set. There are some diagrams they are not Mickey Mouse patterns they are spodges very similar today. No requirements to cover corners especially, splodges stretched horizontally especially when viewed from above. Well there is the difinitive info. Unfortunately none of these colours tie up with the 31 colours in the 1931 BS381 colour standard. But I expect Richard Farrant will be able to give some ideas but he's probably not up yet :wink:

Thanks for the link to the coalhouse fort, got led astray a bit & it took me to the Gary Numan site. Nice to know he's still around. Saw him at an Army Airday show when he flew in. I was nosing around where I shouldn't have been, just taking pictures of army trailers & found Gary having a drink in the pilots beer tent. :? Got a picture somewhere.

Yes, I have a wartime VAOS & it appears there as Lamp, Stop & Tail, Butlers. I have a 1954 RAF 16E Vocab & quotes it for a Bedford OB.

Not quite. I failed an audition as an extra for a Norman Wisdom film, but did watch Normans stuntman drive a double decker bus into the River Teign. I did drive & use the Hornet in a Services Sound & Vision Corporation film made for the Army on the history of Anti-Tank Guided Weapons. The thing that intrigued me most was the director who nipped out to the shops. He came back with a can of black paint, some fire lighters, a large pot of glue and a rubber mat. He cut the mat into strips, wrapped them around the firelighters, stuffed these between the tracks of a nearby tank, poured the glue all over, sprayed the paint all around, then set fire to it. When enough acrid black smoke had built up, I had to drive the Hornet beside it, stop, let the commentator out & raise my missiles. Took several takes & we nearly ran out of acrid smoke. But what they couldn't grasp was that the missile hydraulics only work when the vehicle has stopped so I was a bit slow off the draw to their liking. I don't think the Tank Museum were very pleased about what was done to their tank :evil:

Actually I don't mind people criticising. In fact I quite enjoy it, provided they say so politely to my face & not just storm off! I remember my grey prototype Shorland at a show, an old hand confessed he had been telling people to ignore it as it was clearly some homemade effort & shouldn't really be here. He was a bit surprised when I told him that it was the prototype for the first APC based on a Land Rover which I had restored without any modifications. I would dearly love people to come up at a show & question me about the authenticity of the attached pig. Because there are nearly 60 differences between this & a standard Army Mk1 pig. But nobody seems to notice or perhaps they are afraid I will blow my top because someone has questioned the restoration. BTW it is a FV1609 built genuinely in 1956, one of twenty prototypes. I believe is now the oldest pig in the world. Pigs are often stated in show programmes as 1953, 54 etc but that is only the chassis. All the production pigs were built in 1958-59 period.

Yes the guns all sound good fun. But your pig had specific roles but at different times. The EARPs were fited to 123 pigs in the period 1973-74. The Pig Squirts were modifications carried out from May to Dec 1975. There were meant to be 36 Pig Squirts (but I can only document the histories of 22). So it was either fitted out to EARP or Squirt, but not at the same time. Depicting the two roles simultaneously, would look a bit strange. Sorry to be a spoil sport. :wink:

Ah but the boot can be on the other foot! Usually in the model tent at Beltring there is a model of a Hornet (FV1620) which has not only the jerrycans on each door as it should. But one on the top of each locker on each side. It never had both of these. :oops: It was once on one side then they fitted a larger exctractor cowl then the jerrycan got moved to the other side. The maker insists that it is all copied from authentic photographs. But one photo is a FVRDE prototype the other photograph of the other side is an in service vehicle. I then point out that the model is incorrect, I know because my model is parked in the garage. :roll:

Here it is chapter & verse: 26/Publications/8760, Equipment Regulations 1959 Pamphlet No.9 Marking & Painting of Vehicles, Army Aircraft & Equipment. Ammendment 2/Jun/1960 Markings Applicable to All Vehicles. Formation Signs 12. These will conform to the formation badges approved by the War Office for use on clothing. 13. Formation sign will not exceed 9 1/2 inches high by 8 1/2 inches wide. They will be displayed on the front and rear of all vehicles, except trailers where they will be displayed on the rear only and motorcycles which will bear no formation sign. The signs will be shown on the left front mudguard and the left side of the tailboard or in places corresponding as closely as possible to these positions. In the case of saloon cars and limousines which are to be so marked, the signs will be mounted on detachable plates not exceeding 6 inches high by 5 inches wide Unit Signs aprroximately 9 1/2 inches high and 8 1/2 inches wide will be displayed at the front and rear of all vehicles except trailers on which they will be displayed at the the rear only. NATO signs where applicable were "in" by this time, but Formation Signs should have been "out" from 1977 on orders of CRAOC. (I have said should, because people will want to tell me of markings that still existed after that time) Anyway I've got bored with typing for now. There was a 15 page article in Windscreen Summer 2000 covering most aspects of painting & marking vehicles. I'll send it to get it posted here eventually. :roll:

Anyone any ideas for the reliable & rapid transfer of fiche either to paper or ideally PC? I have several fiche readers & looking the odd something up is no problem. But I have a lot of EMERs & AESPs locked up in fiche that I would like to get at more easily, in fact the fiche collection is about 18 inches thick, which is equivalent I guess to a small room full of bookcases filled with documents. If there is something I want, I just take a digital picture then store or print it. But its a pain, I have to then transpose it to a negative to get normal text & often shift the horizontal & vertical linearity on the photo software. A single document I can cope with, but it is very time consuming. I have an Epson scanner that can take slides. When I scan fiche which is back illuminated & goes up to 4800 dpi (very slow!). I can get lines of text appear but the optics let me down, letter characters a very broad & fluffy. You can just work out what it says but it's not easy to read. The army had a range of fiche readers ranging from hand-held to printer types. Our reference library have a lot of fiche records & can print off a page for 20p or so. With the size of the collection I estimate this would cost £10,000 maybe, plus a lot of time. Unfortunately these reader-printers use heat sensitive paper as in cheaper fax machines & all of this will fade away within a year! I know I can then scan these printouts to the PC but it all takes time. So anyone got any ideas how to transfer fiche into a more useable form?

Andy GS The wheels are 7.00 x 20 divided rims, tyres 20.00 x 9.00 Pig The wheels are 8.00 x 20 divided rims, tyres 11.00 x 20 run flat There are also differences in: Front to rear axle ratio Gearbox ratios Transfer box ratios

exit one camara. .................. Stupid boy! Can't visualise the fixing, how big is it? A point I should have made, also view it in terms of tyres. Are they good & likely to remain so for the next few years? If not you have to multiple 5 x £150 at least & deduct that from the perceived value. My 1-Ton cypher trailer last year had 2 new tyres £450 including splitting the rims. And rims can be so & sos - I have a FVRDE report on using explosive cord to blow them apart. Although we didn't have to use this method! Of course don't think you can get hold of pig tyres & use em as they are bigger.

Oh now I don't think we need more judging! My wife goes to horse shows & everything is judged. There are a lot of tears & traumas for the majority who don't get judged top of the class. It causes so much upset, yet they keep on entering & paying to do so. I suggested once that someone hire a field, have a burger stall & a beer tent. Sell some bits of surplus saddlery, books etc. walk round look at each others horses, chat, have few beers & watch a few displays. Have a ride past & just generally enjoy the hobby & take it easy on a nice summers day. She looked blank & said "What would be the point of all that?" So we don't want to get like that! Judging is an unenviable responsibility & I know we don't have bicycles versus tanks as such. But I have seen things win first prize because it looks dandy but is rusty underneath or things painted on or bolted on that never should be there. I was at a show & a judge came up & asked why I had marked my entry "Not to be judged" I explained that my very nice Wolf Land Rover was an ex-Withams wreck from a RTA. But it was not restored by me so whats the point in awarding me a prize. I think the judge was a bit perplexed.

Assuning this is Truck Utility Heavy (TUH) 4x4 Reynolds Boughton. You need the AESPs in the series 2320-E-200-*** If it is Truck Cargo Heavy Duty Mk2 you need: AESPs in the series 2320-E-201-*** The first digit of the last three defines the document type: '1' Purpose & planning information '2' Operating Instructions '3' Technical Description '4' Installations & Special Environments '5' Maintenance Information & Instructions '6' Maintenance Schedules '7' Parts Catalogue '8' Modification & General Instructions The rest defines the level of info eg 1=User 4=Base Workshop Not all permutations exist. eg there are no more parts in it because it is in a higher level of workshop. I don't have these AESPs, as for destroying them you are correct in thinking that is bollox. Try: http://www.rememuseum.org.uk/index.htm

Right Ok. I'll send you one of my Word documents then a list of the columns I need. I need to transfer it over as its on another PC. I have this one for internet, fun & nonsense. Then the other that has no modem, no network & kept just for work & MV data. It struck me the safest firewall was no internet connection at all! Thanks I'll be intouch. Clive

Neil Ah well I came unstuck in the first paragraph when you said "these include (in theory) using the meta tags of the documents themselves for dynamic searches". I do get confused between Access (which I take to be the database) & Excel (which I think of as the search engine & sifter out of data) but not sure if it's that clearcut. I have a book on Access but not sure if should be reading a book on Excel. Each document in Word is a line apart from the document code no. there are no columns. I was just hoping there was some way of plonking a pile of these Word bits & sliding a column line to split up each bit of info. It would be easy enough to column the Word info, then nice if I could plonk a column in bulk. But Word only allows line by line selections not columns. Or is there some way of columning the Word info so columns could be selected? Sorry for the dim questions.

Um yes but what is it? Do you mean the Radio B44 or is it a vehicle or summat?

Anyone got any tips on creating a database, I am wrestling with Access at present & it is all alien I just read chapter after chapter & its just like reading a PC book for the first time, frightening days! The problem is I have at least 5000 documents recorded in Word documents. What I want to be able to do is record the various document codes, type of document, subject & date. So I can fish out everything say on exhaust pipes or ferrets or everything published in a given year. I have just drawn up some columns of what I want & paste in the existing line I have from Word & select bits out & paste into each column. This takes 5 min. To do all of these it would take 2.5 weeks of non-stop work :cry: Does anybody have any ideas of automating this or any programme other than Excel that might do it?

Degsy. Yes a lot of them did end up as breakdown trucks. Actually there was meant to be a breakdown truck model FV1606 to rescue broken down Humbers. I have the FDD design spec document on it & there was meant to be a water tanker FV1608. I like to think that the breakdown truck wasn't needed as they were so reliable! The issue was side stepped with the water tanker that role was assumed by the other GS 1-Tonners (K9 & MRA1). The FV1608 idea was dropped in 1958, when something more worthwhile was in store for the Humber, the production of the Pig started in that year. The garages humber probably has the rear joints gone but the front ones are likely to be ok & my recollection is that the joints are the same front & rear. So could be useful carcass for somebody. I bought my truck as a non-runner simply to get the flywheel off it as the Hornet one was cracked when some nitwit burnt out the clutch. But I can recall a Humber wireless truck about 20 years ago providing roadside refreshments up Humberside area. I wish I took a picture :cry:

Andy The covers are metal, some were single lids some were split into two. Ah "but the seller has, I think an idea of what he thinks its worth," well sometimes that is more than it is worth. Remember this is a public site & the seller could be watching all this with amusement! Why a vehicle always have to be 100+ miles away I just don't know! The Humber Wireless Light FV1604 is more common than a FV1601/1602 & has more appeal as you can live in the back of it quite comfortably. I have seen a few of those appear for £4000 but seem not to sell whether they do in the end I don't know or whether they go back into the barn etc to resurface later. Given that pigs do not sell for much as there is apparently little interest they seem to be £1500 to £2500. Yes there are more expensive ones but they seem to go unsold. I would value a complete & not rusted one in about the same bracket, a bit more if it is "just out of Ruddington sales, parked it here & never used it" Although a vehicle that hasn't been used for a long time has its own problems or refurbishment. A seller would be bound to say that you don't see many of them in preservation & it must be worth more. That is true but there are not that many preserved because by & large people aren't interested in them, quite wrongly in my view. But it's an argument which cuts both ways in terms of value!

Andy It has a Rolls Royce B60 (ie 6 cylinder) same as Ferret. Champ was B40 (ie 4 cylinder) but the pistons etc are the same. The hole I'm interested in is about 18in square & was used for a PTO take off to drive a compressor. There were only 10 Humbers like this FV1622. They were part of the Missile Test set up for Malkara missiles. It might sound a long shot, but I know of one that is preserved, but less the compressor. Pounds yard in Portsmouth had them & they sold the compressor for charging divers air bottles as the story goes. Check the rear to see if it had racks under the canvas that would indicate FV1621 Missile Supply Trucks I can only find evidence of nine of those. Dead easy to drive had very good handling in the desert. Sensibly designed, solid & British. Well worth preserving if reasonably priced & not too far gone, like mine. A properly designed military vehicle rather than the others in the1-Ton class of the time (ie Austin K9 & Morris MRA1). It was not a GS, but a CT (Combat) type it was "standardised" with interchangeability. So the starter motor, dynamo, light switch, instrument panel etc was interchangeable with Ferret, Salidin, Saracen, Champ etc Quite rare, worth having if price & condition are right.

I think "reverting to nature" is fairly acurate. postage? how big is your letterbox?

Just make sure the truck is in better condition than this one: BTW it is for sale as it still has the front & rear axles which will fit a Pig. The front Tracta joints are the same. Now I know that Mk1 Pigs had the stronger Chobham joints, but the Army found them to be unreliable & actually retro fitted Tracta joints from GS trucks like this. Now if you have a Mk2 Pig you will say yes but they should have a Birfield joint. Not necessarily, there were 487 Mk2 Pigs, but only 383 of them had Birfield joints. They ran out of the special steel from Germany so there were 104 Mk2 Pigs with either Chobham or Tracta joints like this poor GS Truck. The cost of a pig rear axle seems to be £200 upwards. You can have the GS for £100 to include all ivy & nettles. Postage extra.

I have one of these myself it is decomposing in the garden. I just nick bits off it to keep the three armoured ones going. So a truck is quite a rarity, the most critical aspect is the bodywork. There are no spares for bodywork around. They have either rusted away or been chopped around for garage breakdown trucks. At least the rate of rusting on a pig is less! So has it been dry stored, does it have original bodywork? Does it have a hole cut in the middle of the rear floor? A few did, if it has then that would be very exciting I'll explain the significance if it has. If you have the VRN, serial no or engine number I can give you the history.