Chris Suslowicz

Chris that all sounds very feasible. Annoyed I didn't take a picture of the inside when I had the chance (the item is not mine)

 

What do you reckon on push-switches A, B & I? I'm trying to envisage what electrical role they would play in the switching. Maybe being 3 switches they could rearrange the sequence of the 9 key switches, so that even with 9 switches selected at the press of a button each trio could be put in a different order, allowing instant changing to two further sequences of Morse characters?

 

PS Or were you thinking, pressing say I made 'normal' keying, then say A pressed space & dash swapped. Then pressing B space & dot swapped for instance?

Not sure about that, but I suspect that the "I" button is the "Off" position, due to the wording on the plate. I don't think it's for shuffling the sequence, because you would build a two letter call (say "AK") as "down, up, centre, up, down,up" with the rest centred, but the codes you can use are limited by the number of morse elements in the letters: HH is four dots, a space, and four dots. If it's for an airfield approach, A & B might be for switching the approach pattern for opposite directions (you need dots on one side of the runway, dashes on the other, and they "fill in" to give a constant signal when you're correctly lined up).

On the other hand... Airfield beacon: A for daytime (white button) and it flashes a visible signal, B for night (black button), I for "Off" (red button) - enemy close enough to use it to locate you (or you're changing the code and don't want to send a garbled signal).

Chris I don't think it is RAF as there are no familiar Vocabulary codes. I think "Pattern" is more leaning to Admiralty Pattern & indeed the key switches all have Admiralty Pattern numbers on them inside. Unfortunately I omitted to take an internal view.

 

Inside there is small electromagnetically driven selector switch with perhaps nine banks to match the key switches. It resembles a small version of telephone exchange selector.

 

I'm sure you are right Chris that it is some sort of IFF system whereby a Morse code identifier can be programmed by the key switches.

 

To what system it is linked to I do not know. I imagine the speed of the keying is fairly rapid. So I don't know whether the keying is initiated by receiving a triggering signal to interrogate it, whether it is a continuous (please do not attack me) beacon or whether it might be auto-initiated at the beginning & end of a transmission of messages.

 

I wonder whether it was used to send an identifier or whether it was a way of specifying the code that a message might be encrypted with.

 

A, B, & I are push button selectors.

 

I note that it is to be used in conjunction with REC. P43A. That sounds like a receiver but I can find no references to it. I used to have an Admiralty Receiver I think it was a P58 that covered something like 400-650 Mc/s, but I can find nothing about that either.

 

If all else fails on here & nobody recognises it I may contact http://www.rnmuseumradarandcommunications2006.org.uk/

 

Right, that's a MUCH better photograph, I can actually read most of the lettering.

My guess: Code setting unit for a navigation beacon (ship or shore based). I doubt very much that a receiver is in any way involved, and the lettering at bottom right probably expands to: "Stowage position for plug for receptacle P43A, insert appropriate plug in P43A for normal or low power working." P43A was probably a selector that determined whether the transmitter was in low (for tuning/testing) or high power mode. Navigation beacons sent a morse identification signal of 1, 2 or 3 letters, so that explains the "Dash - Space - Dot" positions for the keyswitches,

Best,

Chris.

For setting IFF units?

Hmmm... It's got nine keyswitches , a lid that locks them in position once set, a ten way connector that is unlikely to be Army (probably Air Ministry) and a bank of three pushbuttons that may be an A/B/cancel.

I'd say it's RAF and for setting some kind of recognition signal or indicator - three rows of three lights to display one of two patterns or turned off completely?

Chris

... the second plate has the code YA8196.

That's a stores code: Section Y of the Vocabulary of Army Ordnance Stores deals with Line Telephony and Telegraphy equipment (though it sometimes escaped into the radio section, e.g: Pins, Earth, Small). It may be the stores code for the trailer itself, as it's quite a high number.

Anyone got any Section W, Y or Z stores vocabularies in their possession?

(If so, can I borrow them for scanning, please?)

Chris.

the man is dead what the hell are they doing bringing this up,all it is doing is tarnishing his family

Not just that: two days after his funeral, I think, and they put it on the front page with the biggest type they could find.:mad:

It's not the gutter press anymore, it's the sewer press.

The rear infantry phone was missing from 091 when i got it. I got hold of one but it was in very poor condition. Just recently i a acquired a( NOS) Brand new box with the phone still wrapped in wax paper and plastic.

I have stripped the new box and internals, i cut the mounting tabs from the old box and fitted then to the new one , then repainted it the Aussie color and re-assembled and fitted it to the 091.

So that's what those handsets are for... I got one at Beltring a couple of years ago thinking it was WS19 or WS62 kit (going by the snatch plug and the use of two microphone inserts for both microphone and earpiece). Another mystery solved. :-D

That tank is going to look like it's just rolled off the production line by the time you've finished. Excellent work.

if anyones read the sun today.why the hell can they not let this man rest in peace what the hell is wrong with people

I wouldn't touch The Sun with an eleven-foot pole and insulated gloves, but if it's the same tattle that was in yesterday's Sunday Mercury (I am now looking for a decent Sunday newspaper, or maybe the TV Times, to replace this mistake), then I am currently sharpening and polishing a letter to the Press Complaints Commission. Ba*ds!:mad:

"De mortuis nihil nisi bonum" is just the beginning of it....

Have to agree about Cosford Paul,unfortunately I won't have a vehicle and will need to be able to get back to the city centre so Cosford is perhaps just that bit too far.

 

Matt.

No. 900 bus service from Birmingham city centre (stops outside the Polish church opposite Moor Street station), I think the motorcycle museum is a couple of stops after the airport (walk back to the roundabout and cross the road under the bridge). Bus fare is £1.80 each way and the bus company does not give change, so have the right money. Return bus stop is near enough opposite the outward one (and stops in the same place in Birmingham, as that's the terminus). Don't get the 900A or 900E service for the outward journey unless you fancy a walk, as it only goes as far as the airport.

Have Fun!

Thanks for the replies. I think it will have to be the Motorcycle Museum,at least then I can drool over a Brough Superior

You can also admire the two WD sidecar outfits, one with a Bren, t'other with a Vickers. Not to mention the wooden sculpture of (I think) a Norton, and some maniac's jet + rocket assisted drag bike.:wow:

A difference in terminology here chaps. In my experience a Trolley Acc (as in accumulator) is a hand pulled trailer full of batteries as opposed to a charging set. We tried once to start a 24 volt Spitfire with a 12 volt trolley at an RAF open day. It died pretty quickly! Oops!

"Trolley Acc" charging unit = petrol generator for recharging "Trolley Acc"s.

Chris.

Um, that's virtually nothing to go on. JAP made stationary/portable engines amongst other bits of precision engineering.

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/J._A._Prestwich_Industries_(JAP)

Two generating sets I know of: the "Trolley Acc" charging unit used by the RAF, which is a 300-ish watt charging set (separate engine and generator on a common steel frame with a carrying handle at each end), and a rather larger 1260 watt charging set with separate switchboard for recharging multiple batteries at once. These were used by the army for centralised charging and distribution of batteries where running engines near the front line was a bad idea.

There were almost certainly other units produced, I'd expect 6/12/24 volt battery chargers (delivering up to 7.5/15/30 volts), and probably 110 and 240 volt AC generating sets for other purposes.

"In a carrying frame" probably means it's the Charging Set 1260 Watt No.5 ZB.10330, with a single cylinder vertical engine of 412 cc. The data sheet reckons the engine and generator weighs 338 lb, and the charging switchboard a further 76 lb.

I only have the Part 0 (Signal Data) EMER for this, which lists the basic specifications and weight, etc.

Chris.

I was going to suggest "Cheese, Possessed", but a crate that size probably contravenes the Hague Conventions.

:shocking:

Chris.

Ummm... all radio kit at this end:

WS88 ground station aerial, complete in its bag.

Dead batteries for A40/CPRC26 (2 varieties), Bardic lamp, and the 4.5V "bell battery" of old.

WS88 battery tops (for the connectors), headset and handset.

NOS drop leads (the all rubber sort) for WS19 control units.

Dial drive springs and microphone rubbers for WS19 and chums.

WS62 spare valve case in horrible condition.

Crystal retaining plate for the (long drawn out) WS46 rebuild project.

A turtle (UK/RT 320) (which does not work and appears to have been backloaded into a skip from a considerable height, judging be the bent carrying frame and broken fin. It's probably fixable (if not, it's worth it for spares)).

Sore feet, aching knees and backache - so I didn't get around much of the show apart from the fleamarket.

The discovery that I am now too old for two consecutive 0430 - 2230 days.

The weather was mostly reasonable though, I had a good time and didn't completely empty the piggybank.

The first one is actually moderately sensible, the ladder is trapped against the metal railing and can't shift. The second one is batsh1t insane, and it goes steadily downhill from that point. (If that's a portion of the longer photo set currently doing the rounds, the guy cleaning the windows on the 40th floor probably takes the biscuit (not to mention the entire tea service).

To be fair to Thus (who used to be Scottish Telecom) it was investing heavily in Demon just before it was swallowed up by Cable and Wireless. Then umm, can we say "asset stripping"?

Presumably the investment was to try and entice back the customers who had left when the support got transferred to India? Getting rid of Malcolm Muir (who I always though was on the inventory as "essential network infrastructure/physical plant") was a another line of writing on the wall.

Clueless & Witless, asset stripping? You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Chris.

surely your breaching their human rights taking pictures without consent?!?!?!?

 

 

i personally would use a trip wire with blank shotgun cartridges, or at least i thought they were blanks officer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Heh. In the absence of the 12ga blank firing alarm mine, I will note that Switch No.1 (with the cap holder bored out to take an 8mm blank) works extremely well against scrotes trying to steal your brother's Mazda RX7 off his drive at 3am for the purpose of joy-riding (or whatever). They probably had to change their underwear at that range - less than a yard - and the dibble who turned up later (in response to the repeated theft attempts) was concerned at the sight of a spent 12 ga shot cartridge lying reasonably prominently on the driveway - put there to frighten the scrotes into thinking that live ammunition was in use. (The dibble thought this was an _excellent_ idea when it was explained to him.)

I was under the impression all of the britsh resperaitors from ww2 had asbestos in them, including the civilian issued ones. Unsure of the other countries.

ALL respirators made prior to the mid-1950s had asbestos in the filter and must not be worn.

The Service respirator (brown canister with hose) contains crocidolite (blue asbestos).

The Civilian Duty respirator (heavy rubber mask with attached filter and rubber exhaust valve contains chrysotile (white) asbestos in the standard filter and crocidolite in the add-on green canister (Contex filter).

The Civilian respirators use the same filters as the Civilian Duty model.

None of them should be worn if you value your lungs, the paper in the filters is a mix of asbestos fibre and esparto grass pulp, and this will have degraded in the 70+ years since they were manufactured and probably shed fibres over the interior of the mask if you draw air through it.

Post 1956 masks use spun glass filters (developed by the Americans as they had no strategic supplies of esparto grass or asbestos (apparently)), and may be safe to wear.

Chris

(I have a longer article about this somewhere.)

I read about Salisbury been without phones and broadband - didn't know it was due to thieves.

 

I used to work within Salisbury as IT Support - I am glad I wasn't there that day .

 

I use the ISP that is BT - my friend uses Virgin Media.

 

The quality of support offered by Virgin Media is a great deal better than BT - however, my friend had a great deal of problems with the actual service delivered by Virgin Media - mainly at peak times - in general the load balancing on BT seems to be a great deal better.

Hmmm... I started out with Pipex until they laid off everyone with a clue (putting their mailservers into an address range declared to the world as "ADSL Dynamic Dialup" was the final straw), then switched to Demon. That was OK apart from problems with the local BT hardware until they were swallowed up by Scottish Telecom (who laid off everyone with a clue), and I'm now with Be (for connectivity) and Gradwell (for email). This works Very Well Indeed for what I want to use it for, though it's not (when you add everything up) the cheapest solution.

Someone I know with Virgin has endless problems with their offshored "technical support" - his current problem is connecting to GoDaddy in Arizona - it works for _everyone_ else, including other Virgin users, but not from his connection and "technical support" are denying there's a problem. There may well be someone in possession of a clue working for Virgin, but if so they are very well hidden.

Your mileage may vary, contents may settle in transit, close cover before striking, prohibited where void, void where not prohibited, not for sale to miners, may contain traces of humour, etc.

Chris.

(Dinosaur Herder and free-range cynic.)

Well I so do hope she did not suceed - my blood would boil for just a little longer, if she did:mad:

Note the word "tried". 8-)> I suspect that when the laughing stopped they wrote back and explained that Legal Aid wasn't available for private prosecutions and that the inquest had not found anyone apart from the late unlamented at fault.

Nowadays it'd probably be a different matter of course, but getting yourself turned into a crispy critter while trespassing on the railway having cut through/climbed over fences to do so ought to see any claims throw out with great force.

<grumble>

Chris

One, get registration of a vehicle, Two, phone 999 in hysterics claim vehicle cut you up as it was turning in and the driver waved what looked like a handgun at you. Three, Sit back and watch the fun.

 

That's seriously unwise for all kinds of reasons, the main one being that there are few enough Dibbles to go around at the best of times, and that sort of call is going to get large numbers of them involved in a wild goose chase - what if they're needed for something really serious in the meantime? It's also likely to get you done for "wasting Police time", since they will know who you are and where you live (the 999 switchboard will want loads of detail when you call).

Something really does need to be done about the scrotes but that's not it, I'm afraid.

Chris

Well I do not know about Belgium but if anyone was electrocuted over here, the family of the thieving scum would have sued the railway company and successfully been awarded enourmous damages + loss of earnings and holidays and awarded support new vehicles, new houses with benefits and bloody well anything else that the scum's solicitors can think of:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:. I am afraid that I kid you not.

During the Miners strike and three day week, some enterprising scrote decided to help himself to a lot of copper piping at a builder's yard in Birmingham. All went as planned, and he was walking back across the railway tracks with his bundle of loot on his shoulder when they reckon he stumbled on a loose bit of ballast and received rather a nasty shock.

His widow apparently tried to sue British Rail for failing to turn the 25kV overhead lines off during the scheduled power cuts.

Evolution in action, I call it. Chummy should have realised the signal lights were still operating normally even though the entire district was in darkness.

it must be an early type, as the poles are thinner than the masts we have and it doesnt have any of the bits with it, shame

I asked "someone who would know" and got this back:

"Yes, I know precisely the "thinner/lighter" mast you refer to, it was a very well made item, held together with an elastic shock cord down the centre, and was the elevation kit for the UHF antenna for the late Larkspur UHF beacon, the one with a valve PA, and a motorised coder disc inside it, that came in a green bondage style carrier. TRA something, and ran off of an external 12V battery, and was used for DZ set-up by Pathfinders amongst others. Can't recall the number, but had a little diplexer box on the front panel to link the tx and rx connections to the BNC output socket. Also had a DC meter to measure the 12V battery.

These units were about in large quantities in stores, and I think never worked well enough to be trusted, but people used to snaffle the very nice lightweight mast, and use that to elevate the discone for the A43R initially, and then the Bob Marley for the 344 later on, as it went up single handed very quickly."

I can't find anything on t'internet between the A43R and the PRC-344, but if it started TRA, it would be Racal kit (and hence well-made).

That may get you a bit further forward, and I'll have a look in the Racal Antennas brocure to see if I can spot it.

Chris.

yeh, loop has a bit cut out, well not cut out but off set so loops not complete, never seen one of them before

2nd one, we thought it was camo poles but not sure, webbing has a pouch on front as if to put in guy ropes and pegs etc? will get piccy of him to post up

Ah, if it's 6 fibreglass poles measuring 98.5 x 3 cm, then that's the Clansman 5.4 metre mast. The pouch will be for all the bits you need to actually put the thing up (stayplates x2, pegs x 5, guys x 6, top piece with wire for use as vertical antenns, plastic ring with toggle for use with wire aerial...).

Chris.

one of our guys has picked up some kit but is a bit baffled on what is is, sorry no pick but ill do my best to descripe.

1st one, og fiber glass pole same length look to a infantymans mast but the section has a big hoop on the top, bit like the pole in the kids game where if you touch the wire it buzzes, but much much bigger

2nd one, its in a canvas 58 style bag about the same size as the infantry mans mast mag, it contains similar fiber glass og poles which when put together are about the same hight as the infantry mans mast, no other bits are with it.

i will get him to put some piccys up asap, cheers

1st one: if the hoop at the top has a piece cut out of it (i.e: it's not a complete ring), it's a "crookstick" for laying and reeling in telephone cable.

2nd one: could be an aerial support, or part of a support kit for camouflage netting.

Chris.