Align Your Wireless Set No. 19 MKII
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Likely the first piece of Radio Kit specifically designed to utilize commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts for Military Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFV), such as command cars, halftracks and tanks. The Wireless Set No. 19 was revolutionary in its Built to be Producible Design. Let's go through the set and get it into top working alignment.
What a great video. I used 19 sets in the army cadets at school, and loved them - especially with the dynamotor power supply that kicks in the second dynamotor on TX- you could always tell a 19 set on AM on the air, as the carrier faded in over about a second as the power supply sped up. I have one of my own now, a Mk III in good condition, but it needs restoration and a PSU. It was a project on the to-do pile when I suddenly lost most of my eyesight, and I can't work on electronics any more. So I'll either have to find a fully working one, and they're expensive and rare, or some friendly local restoration nut who'll take it on for me! But I must get back on air with it, they're very characterful sets to operate.
proudsnowtiger , Hopefully you will FIND (HINT, HINT!) someone to do what is needed!
Enjoyed your video Mike nice job take care
Interesting, thank you. The comparison between transmitters and receivers at the end was enlightening.
I acquired my 19 MK3 three years ago quite cheaply and I found out why. I had to re-wire some wrong wiring, re-wind 2 coils with new wire of about 40 SWG, replaced 3 visibly leaky capacitors and other various bits of work. BFO poor and only working about one third it's travel so use the rx. switched in it's NET position, which has a toggle switch on my set. It seemed very deaf and I put it aside for a year then looked at it again and found a different value fixed capacitor inside the 2nd i.f. transformer which I replaced with 3 new ones to get the proper value but couldn't tune the i.f. core as I think they must have been aligned then glued so they didn't move when crossing uneven ground. I'm guessing somebody tried to widen the i.f. for a.m. broadcast reception, I don't know. I've never seen an i.f. transformer with two different value capacitors in and I can see in the wax where the original was removed.
It's tatty, I converted the EF50 into an xtal oscillator only on tx for stability and ease in finding 5.262 MHz, and added a low value variable capacitor for ease in tuning the rx. around the main frequency setting. Stability is good at 60m and I don't need to re-tune the rx.
Only used it on 60m so far recently with 250 Volts on everything so just under 3 Watts c.w. A 160 mile 2 way QSO is my best so far just after Christmas. Now the low band on rx. has a coil gone o/c, probably due to oxidation like the other two coils which each had a green spot on the winding and broken when I removed the wire..
73, Bill, G4GHB.
Wow you are mad all right! That was how I got my R1155. It had so many issues, that folks just gave up. Oh I have had some beat me. But its worth the journey to see if you can bring them back.
Great video Mike .Always remember getting a nasty shock off the cw jack , I beleive they fitted a plastic protector at some point to stop you touching the shaft of the plug .
ZING! Now that dresses out your snappy CW technique.
I got a 19 set with power supply and the high power amplifier for £25 during 2020 and decided to get it operating on am and cw for my first vintage radio set after I passed my licence. I would say it is weak in some aspects but I get so many people saying that it sounds great I’m going to leave it like it is.
M7BLJ Jake
Thank you! Amazing video. Folks - this is what happens when you combine a lifetime of experience with a great on-camera personality and dedication to- and skill at- producing a pleasant, very well researched, video production. Myself? I love QRP, prototyping single conversion superhet transceivers, and am stuck with low-side LO injection! I mean.. i wanna be able to snap off a quick 35 WPM 'thank you and a lie'... a quick 'TU 599' before I drift outta the poor bugger's Rx passband. 73
Thanks for showing this! I bought one of these sets, unfortunately missing PSU and such but I did get the connectors and such. Building a psu shouldn't be that hard :)
You would be surprised how well it responds to a well regulated medium voltage and fairly stable HV power supply. Its almost chirp free and starts to sound like a Yaesu!
You're right - users (particularly tank crews) hated the B set and most simply ignored it. Having had a 19 set in the 1960s, all I remember was the relentless loud super-regeneration 'hiss' from the B set receiver. Not that there was anything to hear on 240 MHz back then. The useful thing about the 19 set was that it was a compact integrated transceiver which fitted easily into fighting vehicles, that it incorporated a crew intercom for the crew and that the A set was, back then, a half decent general coverage shirt wave receiver. 113,000 WS 19 sets were made in WW2 (4 makers in UK, 3 in USA, 3 in Canada and 1 in Australia) making it the commonest WW2 radio over. Manufacturers in America were RCA, Zenith and gosh, can't remember. The British never used US made 19 sets- they all went to Commonwealth forces.
I used to think that the Collins TCS or the ARC-5s were the best effort of the war, but this radio takes the cake.
I like your videos a lot, so I always watch and pay attention to.
At this video I cannot realize the frequency conversion on both Rx and Tx mode (4:42 to 6:49 simplified block diagram description)
.
For the example, in Rx: 7166KHz-7120KHz=46KHz (not 465KHz).
In Tx: 7166KHz-465KHz=6701KHz (not 7120KHz).
Please is something missing?
Good maths! I will give this a look and correct!
You have a pi filter for the Pye.....
I'm glad I found this again.
After my previous comment 3 years ago I found that things may not be tuned up properly in the i.f. stages.
It works but not as I expected. I was able to greatly increase the volume of the set be adding a variable capacitor which is around 100 pF from the grid of V1C to earth so it's been open for three years with this capacitor sitting on the metal screening.
I'll try again after watching how you connected the sig. gen. with a capacitor and resistor. I didn't do this and simply tuned things by on air signals. I have a synthsised v.f.o. now which I can use as a signal source.
I'm wondering if the capacitor in the i.f. can has silver mica disease and is doing nothing or shunting the signal to earth.
However after hearing that c.w. signal at the end maybe my set is not working too bad. I since worked into Mallaig, some 280 miles distance on 5.262 MHz QRP frequency and a low inverted vee. Purposely 3 Watts c.w. on low H.T. I like that frequency as it's a wide rx so not as crowded.
73, G4GHB.
R/T does not mean Receive/Transmit but Radiotelephone I believe.
Excellent Comment!
So, where DID the genuine 'Lend-Lease' MkII WS19s go? Certainly, new-in-box MkIIs were sold, mail order, through UK hobbyist magazines right through the 1950s and 60s, either as complete stations - plugs, microphones, headphones, control box, variometer, dynomotor included or with a bolt-on UK mains PSU instead - but those would be 'Military Surplus' not Lend-Lease as they'd probably never left the USA during WW2 (Canada supplied the British with enormous quantities of equipment, materiel, cash and raw materials but, those were never referred to as 'Lend-Lease').
I saw, for sale, a terribly battered, barely recognisable, Cyrillic only MKII set in a London, UK 'emporium' in about 1972 but otherwise, I never set eyes on a *used* US manufactured 19 set over here. Pres. Truman did demand that the USSR actually return its Lend-Lease equipment, including a large number of M4 Sherman tanks and, not to be outdone, the Russians tarted-up those battered old machines and shipped them back to Uncle Sam - presumably with the US 19 set radios still inside.
The US also manufactured the WS48, a derivative, but not a direct copy, of the British WS18/WS68 infantry set. Apart from appearing in some Sicily/HUSKY staged promo pictures, I can't find any 'Lend-Lease' WS48s issued to any British, Empire or Dominion units. WS48 DID get issued to Chiang's Chinese Nationalist troops in the far-east though Lend-Lease [*] - so that's one possible destination to be considered for US made comms equipment.
[*] I know this because no radio performed well in the wet, heavily vegetated combat conditions of the SWP theater but, a comparison of the WS48 (an HF set) and the low-VHF FM SCR-300, showed that the British inspired set could at least provide some communications whereas the SCR-300 was entirely useless [**]. You have to dig right down into Signal Corps technical newsletters to learn this. Admitting inferiority of an American product would have been through gritted teeth!
[**] As were successors like the PRC-9/PRC-25 in similarly vegetated parts of Vietnam.
FWIW, some of the pages of your WS19 MkII manual look *identical* to the post war WS19 MkIII manual that I purchased in UK around 1969. There's a distinctive style to the block diagrams, the diagrams of the internal layout and the way that text is typewritten not printed. I'd assumed that mine was produced on one of those 'drum' duplicators, redolent with the aroma of methylated spirit, made by the likes of Gestetner or Roneo-Vickers. The exception in my manual was a genuine 'blueprint' like master circuit diagram, about A3 size. I'm not sure if you ended up with copies of the British manual - or I, an American one.
Does your WS19 have a 100R resistor across the primary of each IFT? I read that this was done to lower the set's selectivity (because, it would have been hard to keep everything frequency aligned in armoured vehicle radios, given the amount of general physical they'd get). It was a post-war 'fix' (at least over here) to remove those resistors.
Mike,
First, what a great video. I’ve heard and read so much about these sets and to see you work with one was a real treat! These are fascinating rigs from both a military and a war time industry point of view. Just marvelous.
But, you gave me a surprise at 35:59 while operating the rig. That was me, KM4ZZ you were talking with on this radio. I gave you a 579 report. My notes indicated that I knew you were operating a boat anchor but I had no idea you were operating a piece of history so important.
Well, my 2 minutes of fame are now over, thanks for the opportunity to participate.
By the way, the receiver must be pretty good because I was operating my FT-817 with 5 watts QRP.
I was a big fan before but now I am going to start a cult following of your videos.
Sincerely
Charlie
KM4ZZ
Thanks Charlie. These PYE basically guys invented COTS by utilizing the existing Radio and TV parts supply chain!
My Dad had the 19 sets in his Kangaroos...However on their first action they were mute, all he had was 72 drivers. He had to direct them on the battlefield with hand signals from a jeep. Needless to say they were happy to get the 19 sets. He wound up with 3 in his carrier. Of course that attracted a lot of attention from Jerry as he had 3 aerials sticking out the top. I miss him.
The first rule of radio seemed to be in air or land combat - 1. for heavens sake don't transmit a signal!
What happens with 2 super-regens is that their quench oscillators lock. Essentially a kind of encryption. When you have more than 2 sets, you get poor performance and interference. There are patents for this. The patent I am referring is one from 40s from UK. But Superregen receivers have a amazing number of recent patents for 2.4 ghz data comm etc. It is really fascinating as to how such a simple circuit works and what it can do
Very cool. I actually worked for a company that made remote controls to turn on dock lights that used a super-regen in the early 90's.
@@MIKROWAVE1 search for Superregen patents - some as recent as 2018. They have adapted it to do high speed data.
Hi, this is great. I have one of these and I intend to sell it
Hello.
At 35.59 you tune the oscillator. Which component are you adjusting? Also I have a Mk111 Canadian, it does the right things regarding the netting and Het but the BFO tone is rather quiet. Any suggestions on how to increase the volume of it?
Thank you, David
Huh. Check the voltages on the 6K8 Valve. Then look at the bypass and coupling caps. The 19 MKII and Canadian III use the same BFO circuit. The UK III has a new BFO circuit.
@@MIKROWAVE1 Thank you for your help.
Excellent video, didactic and informative. Thank you for your effort!
Thanks for watching. Sometimes it helps to know absolutely nothing and start from there. That is where I was when a literally tripped over this set.
You mentioned the output impedance match well on 50 ohms. But, without the variometer is there a Tank circuit to lower the output impedance of the 807? In short, do you know what is the real output impedance?.
Its low - like 20 Ohms, but it loads into a flat 50 Ohms acceptably.
Nice video but this one had 7 mid roll ads that made it close to unwatchable
New RUclips Fun. They just did this to all of my old videos. Now I have to go back and check and adjust each one. 85 videos.
Why can't you use 3x ECC88 vacuum tubes implementing a SO42P Double Balanced Mixer with oscillator and get rid of all of the crud leaving only the Intermediate Frequency at 455khz.
Hi, this is great. I have one of these and I intend to sell it
Someone will want to play with it!
Hi Mike just got a 19 set MKII. I have the operational manuals but can't find that alignment procedure doc you have. Can you send me a copy or link? Thanks David Scotland GM4GLG
I will find this and get this out to you by email.
Love my old 19 sets. First military radio I ever restored over 30 years ago 👍
Thanks Mike ,very informative kD9MSF out of Lake station Indiana.73
Excellent video, this was a godsend. Thank you, you helped me more than every other source that I’ve found, combined. I have a question, if you wouldn’t mind. I have a WS-19 Mk. II in excellent condition, it looks like it just came out of storage. It has Cyrillic and English, it also has the Power Supply Unit No. 1 mounted together on a steel plate. I’ve been told it was made in New Jersey. I’m in the process of a re-cap right now. My question is about your headphone output on the front panel. My set is lacking this feature, and I’d really love to add one, if possible. Do you know if your set came stock this way, or was it modified sometime later? Do you know if it would it be much of a project to add a phone output there? Prior to seeing this, I was planning to buy purchase an original control unit and the original headphone/microphone set. (I actually just purchased the headphones/microphone component, but I’m not super optimistic about its functionality.). I’m sure the control unit would introduce a whole new pile of obstacles as well, and I’d love to avoid it if I can. Any advice would be a huge help, and I’d be forever grateful. You’re the only person I’ve seen on RUclips (or the entire internet for that matter) who goes this far into the 19 set, and I want you to know that I’m immensely grateful. Thank you.
I made a little plate on the front to replace the original and faked a the graphics. This left room to add the headphone jack and a minipot that is in the cathode of the RF Amplifier stage as a gain control. Both were helpful!
Thank you Mike for sharing the procedure with clear and precise images and instructions. I have owned a 19 mk ii since the mid 80s, it is a Russian version, it works well but some parts I have replaced by an Italian one, I have all the documentation so I have been able to build the power supply and I have been able to test the device (I'm very proud of it). Unfortunately it has been off for a long time and I'm a little afraid to put it back into operation!! Thanks again Mike, great video, so far the best on a technical level!!
73 de IK0VWH
The old sets in my shack do not like to be ignored and they tend to surprise us when they are finally turned on again. How can they go bad when they were "fine" last time you used them?
@@MIKROWAVE1 I do hope so 👍😊
TNX for sharing Mike! 73 - Dino KL0S
super video Mike - much appreciated as always...
This is a crazy design that is the grandfather of all of those ICOMs.