From: military-radio-guy Full-Name: Dennis R Starks To: military radio collectors#3 Fcc: Sent Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 06:45:59 Subject: MILITARY COLLECTOR GROUP POST, Aug.10/99 Message-ID: <19990810.064504.13055.7.military-radio-guy@juno.com> X-Status: Sent X-Mailer: Juno 1.49 MILITARY COLLECTOR GROUP POST, Aug.10/99 Index: ANNOUNCEMENTS; CONSTRUCTION OF A RADIO IN A JAPANESE POW CAMP; Part I, By Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Wells ON THE COMMERCIAL FRONT; URR-70 & GRC-106 Parts NEW MEMBER; Billy Wiggins HUMOR; *********************************************** ANNOUNCEMENTS; I got bad news, and I got good news, the bad first. For some time I have known of a small surplus story, way out in the country, that had a large quantity of new, in the original shipping boxes, CS-79N battery boxes as needed for the man-pack use of the BC-620, and -659. From time to time, I'd make a pilrammage to this secret stash, and pick up a small quantity of these battery boxes for friends, and use as trading fodder. It was my plan that when current projects had been cought up, to take orders from members and go out and get as many as needed. Having an excess of funds now, due to my inability to buy the much desired vehicle at last weeks GSA sale, I desided to go ahead and make this pilgrammage a little early. So Monday, off I went. Much to my dismay, I found upon arrival that the place had burned down, and all those precious battery boxes completely destroyed. Now the good news(though not nearly able to make up for the bad). The owner of this secret surplus store, having his place burned to the ground, now needed to clear out one of his warehouses so's he could set up his retail shop in it. While during so, he came across four cases(the good ol wooden crate type) each containing 18ea new headphones. He made me a deal, so I purchased them all. I now share them with you(I'm gonna keep the crates to use as book shelves though). These headphones were used universally by both the Army & Navy as the successor to the HS-30 of WW-II vintage, and are officially known in the equipment manuals of both services as "Navy Type CW-49507A". They are correct for use with such radios as the BC-1306, GRC-9, GRR-5(used with adapter), and a long list of others(including Back-Pack portables). They were designed for use while wearing the standard "tin pot" helmet, include snaps at each ear piece/temple for attaching a lip mic, and are black in color. The basic head phones are 600ohm, and have a 8" cord terminated with a PL-54 plug(short 1/4" phone plug). This short cord was then plugged into a longer cable/adapter for final connection to the radio of interest. These sets are supplied with a 5' extension cable that terminates in a standard PL-55(ordinary 1/4" phone plug). Also included are the instruction sheets(NAVSHIPS 900,256A-IB). If you want some of these, they cost $6.00 a set. Just let me know, along with your mailing address, and I'll send you some. You might also note in your message if I am already obligated to send you some other stuff so's I can throw them in the same box. Dennis *********************************************** CONSTRUCTION OF A RADIO IN A JAPANESE POW CAMP; Part I, By Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Wells This is a transcript of a recording by Lieutenant Colonel R G Wells, on the construction of radio equipment whilst in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp after the fall of Singapore. It was about the beginning of 1942 when I was a prisoner of war of the Japanese, when I was ordered to go on a working party which eventually finished up in Sandakan in British North Borneo. 2,000 odd of us were on this work party and it wasn't long before we noticed the absence of information as to the international situation, what was happening in the outside world, and the whole camp had a real craving to get news by whatever means. Escape parties were being organised, but none of these was very successful. The next thing people turned to was a means of getting some radio news, and this is where the building of a radio set became an urgent requirement. The main thing, of course, was that we didn't have any components and although we had some contacts outside which later on were helpful in the building of this receiver, it limited our requirement to a regenerative receiver as distinct from a superheterodyne receiver and the decision to do that was borne out by the results. The high frequency spectrum during that time of the war was fairly quiet in that part of the world and the BBC, we hoped, would be able to be received. This was aided by the fact that the Japanese in their wisdom called a friend of mine out one evening to repair their radio set and he took the opportunity, of course, to switch over to the short wave bands, with headphones while doing that, and picked up the BBC successfully. That day was memorable because it was the day that the BBC broadcast the death of the Duke of Kent in an aircraft crash. That was the only news we had of the outside world for something like six months. The problem building the set, of course, was the need to build components, so until we could build some components there was nothing much we could do. A look at the circuit diagram of a regenerative receiver indicates a number of capacitors - about two or three are required - low capacitors to make the oscillating part of the system work, and in fact from memory we needed in the grid circuit at least one .01 microfarad capacitor and there was no chance we could get this anywhere, or any other components. So we hit upon the idea of taking some tin foil or aluminium foil from the tea chest which the Japanese supplied with the rice rations, then by the well known equations for calculating capacity and the relationship of the distance between the plates and the area of the plates we built a capacitor or, at least, I built a capacitor which according to calculations should have been about .01 microfarad. If I could put an aside here, I built a replica of this capacitor some years ago, and it went out to Simpson barracks where we had some friends in the testing laboratory, and with great excitement the Warrant Officer concerned said "We will see how good your calculations were"; so he put it on his equipment which was accurate to many decimal points and read on his display unit .009 microfarad, so we thought we were pretty good. I said "Touch " to him because he didn't think we could do it. I made two or three of these, and I still have one of them that would work if I built the receiver again, which I have been thinking about doing but there's always something else, like a lot of other projects which one has as one gets older. The resistors were another problem. We found out that we could use the impurities in some of the tree wood and the bark, particularly cinnamon bark which was available by getting through the wire only about 2 feet, and we could normally pinch that while the Japanese sentry was moving around. We used a piece of string with the material rubbed on it from the burning of the cinnamon bark which had some impurities in it (we didn't have a chemical analysis); we weren't very fussed because most grid-leak resistors were about a megohm or thereabouts and we had no means or any way we could measure a megohm, so it was largely a trial and error thing to see if it would work. We made a number of these bits of string and tied them round different things to dry them out to get the thing going. Eventually about an inch, three quarters of an inch to an inch, was about the right order of things to get about a megohm resistance. There were the two main things. Now the things we couldn't provide, couldn't do. We had to make coils; they were largely trial and error, one could calculate the inductance of these if one had access to some means of measuring the wire gauge and the space between them. So that was largely a trial and error business. The two biggest components, or two biggest requirements, were we needed some headphones and we needed a valve, and I thought that the rest could be made locally with a bit of luck. On the question of the headpiece an outside contact smuggled in one headphone, which was better than no headphone, and a valve · no valve holder but one can't have everything in this life. The other trouble was the power supply. The Japanese main around the camp which provided the power was 110 volts roughly according to the power station meter which we couldn't help but see, because we delivered the wood there while the power station was running; I switched over when no one was looking and the frequency was about 60 Hz, not 50 Hz as we thought, not that this worried us anyway but to know that it was manageable. So two problems remained for the power supply. The first one was the A- battery or low voltage supply necessary for the filament of the valve. We started with a couple of dry cells, but these didn't last very long and we had to make something then. Through being friendly with the pharmacist with the party, we got some potassium bichromate and made up a bichromate cell, which is probably well known in the text books but not of very practical in use. It's fairly hungry for zinc and it needs some sulphuric acid which one can't throw around or hide easily. But it served for some time and was quite successful but, in the end, had the operation lasted very long, we would have been in trouble for that. Two of these cells provided about 3 volts to 4 volts, and 6 volts was a bit too much because each cell was running at a bit over 2 volts, about 2.2 volts. The biggest problem was a rectifier to rectify the AC into DC without dropping it to a low voltage, because remember in those days we needed high voltages for the B supply, or anode supply, but in these days we bring everything down to small DC voltages; we needed to get them up as high as we could. That was a partial failure in that using aluminium foil again and oxidising one piece of it, or length of it folded over, with some weak acid. Then using the two electrodes, one of clear aluminium and one of a zinc salt and aluminium, we could make a rectifier. We wouldn't be so audacious as to call it a rectifier now, because it had a reverse voltage of something like 30 or 40 volts, which wasn't exactly ideal, but for DC we had no option. The result was that I made a bridge rectifier but the only problem was that after 15 minutes the electrolyte began to boil, so it was really passing current in both directions but a little bit more one way than the other. So a single cell, an extra rectifier cell, was the only way I could close this down a bit, and some smoothing. This we achieved with part of a fish plate from the railway line which was being used at the aerodrome to move the dirt from one place to another by man-power. About six men on these, and the odd fish plate used to disappear anyway for various reasons. I dropped one off at the power station and asked the Chinese under my breath if he could cut it into three little sections which he did. He didn't want to know why! Then again using some palm oil and some bee wire which was in fairly plentiful supply, which we stole - it was a bit risky because the Japanese were cultivating a couple of beehives outside the wire and of course this wire used to disappear for various things unrelated to radio. We put the palm oil along the wire stretched out and rubbed this palm oil on it, thickening it with a little bit of flour and then heating it. The flour bound the palm oil together and formed a fairly good insulation over the wire. Good, but lucky, and with a lot of travelling. I should come back to the capacitors on that, because we had to insulate the layers of those which we did by putting a layer of newspaper (a few people had newspaper and various things, for other reasons than newspaper of course, but then we had no other toilet requisites in the party) and by soaking this in some coconut oil we could insulate each layer after we wound it, and with a piece of this bee wire - we had something like fifty feet of it - wound round this part of the fish plate, we made a fairly good choke coil. And then a bigger capacitor, which was no trouble, having had success with the small one, to just wrap as much tin foil as we could round another sheet of newspaper which finished up about 18 inches long by about three quarters of an inch in diameter. We didn't even try to measure the capacitance of it, because we couldn't do anything about it anyway, except put more wire on. And that in effect was a fairly good rectifier, a very dangerous one because we had the 110 all right but we had a bit over that by the time we had rectified it, and we don't know because we had no means of measuring it. Finally, the valve; we joined the valve by winding the clean little bee wire around it and then plugging it with any insulating material we could get to make it stick, - no valve holder, of course. So eventually we produced a receiver of sorts, except it wouldn't oscillate. We tried building more, another choke coil, and this went on for ages; there was no possibility we could get this valve to oscillate. I think it's recommended according to a friend of mine who had an amateur licence, he thought that about 120 volts was the best we could get and there was no way we could get that by trying to smooth this any more. So the only avenue open was to bribe one Chinese working at the power station who was very much our way, and of course in those days was a nationalist Chinese. The capital of China in those days was Chungking, and I told him we could get him some overseas news from Chungking if he would slowly wind his field coil power up on the generator every night starting at about 9 o'clock bit by bit, and get it up to about 130 on his meter. He understood, and after that I said half an hour to drop it again, very quietly and slowly because it may affect the lights "....and you no speak about that because you get chopped, you know, and we will give you Chungking news...." This was duly done and for about six months we had reliable communication. The first trial on air had too much hum, and we had to modify a few things two or three times in attempts to get it right, and in the end we had a workable situation which was worth exploring. Capacitors right, choke coils right, one head phone, we had some old rag so we tied it round the head and tied it on, or string, or whatever we could get. With the hope of recording something we took some paper, which wasn't in plentiful supply, but the odd piece of paper we could get. Running notches down the left hand side, about a quarter to a half inch apart down the paper, and bending it over so that these little pieces stuck up in the air, and in the pitch darkness one could then put the headphones over one's head with eyes looking out for possible interruption by the Japanese · we had some lookouts, or cockatoos as the Australians called them, around the place to warn us at the oncoming of the Japanese - and with great trepidation we heard Big Ben chiming one night. Of course only one of us heard it but we were so full of enthusiasm. It was the BBC all right; it was quite a clear signal but it was somebody talking about growing hops in Kent. This broadcast went on for something like three quarters of an hour without any interruption, but ultimately the signal faded out and I was very annoyed. I was asked the next morning by my senior officer what was the news, and I said "we've got good news; I can't talk here, come this way." So he came along and said "what's this news you're talking about." I said I didn't actually hear any news, and he became very annoyed with me and said what the hell did I mean, and I said "if the British primary producing experts are capable and able to spare the time to talk about growing hops in Kent, Britain must still be alive and floating with their thumbs up, and as far as I'm concerned that's the best news I could hear!" That's the outline and maybe there are some questions I haven't covered properly. See Part II for the conclusion of this story. *********************************************** ON THE COMMERCIAL FRONT; URR-70 & GRC-106 Parts, FOR SALE, TWO EACH ACCESSORY KITS FOR URR-70 OR URR-71 RECIEVERS (R-1518 AND ?) CONSISTS OF FIELD PACK (HEAVY BAG WITH STRAPS), MOUNT MT4034/UR, 3 POWER CABLES (28 VOLT, 115 VAC AND 220VAC) AND CABLE CX12953/U. UNUSED, $85 EA PLUS SHIPPING. TURRET ASSEMBLY FOR AM-3349/GRC-106, MODULE 2A2. THIS IS THE BIG ROTATING DRUM IN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE GRC106 AMP. UNUSED, $50 EA PLUS SHIPPING. STEVE HANEY HANEY ELECTRONIC CO. *********************************************** NEW MEMBER; Billy Wiggins Dennis, I agree to your conditions and would like to join your group. I am a communications electronic technician and work on mostly FM 30-900mhz commercial radios. But my main interest is in manpack HF military communcation equipment. I own a GRC-106A, GRC-106, PRC-104, PRC1099, several PRC-74B's, PRC-68A's, PRC-75, PRC-47's ,and several more radio's. I also enjoy collecting just about any type of military electronics equipment. I have a large collection of Motorola MX300S & R model radio's as well as Sabers with DES/DES-XL encyption. thanks, Billy *********************************************** HUMOR; A man decides to have a face lift for his birthday. He spends $5,000 and feels really good about the results. On his way home he stops at a newsstand and buys a paper. Before leaving he says to the sales clerk, "I hope you don't mind me asking, but how old do you think I am?" "About 35," was the reply. "I'm actually 47," the man says, feeling really happy. After that, he goes into McDonald's for lunch, and asks the order taker the same question, to which the reply is, "Oh you look about 29". "I am actually 47." This makes him feel really good. While standing at the bus stop he asks an old woman the same question. She replies, "I am 85 years old and my eyesight is going. But when I was young there was a sure way of telling a man's age. If I put my hand down your pants and play with your balls for ten minutes, I will be able to tell your exact age." As there was no one around, the man thought what the hell and let her slip her hand down his pants. Ten minutes later the old lady says, "OK, it's done. You are 47." Stunned the man says, "That was brilliant! How did you do that?" The old lady replies, "I was behind you in McDonalds." ----------------------------------------------------------------- A college professor had just finished explaining how important it was that a research project be turned in on time. He said there were only two acceptable excuses for late projects: 1) A certifiable medical excuse 2) A death in the student's immediate family A smart-ass student raised his hand and asked, "What about extreme sexual exhaustion?" As expected, this caused an explosion of laughter. After the class had settled down, the professor froze the student with a glaring look and said, "Well, in that case, I guess you would just have to learn how to write with your other hand." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Headaches A guy is suffering from severe headaches for years with no relief. After trying all the usual cures he's referred to a headache specialist by his family doctor. The doctor asks him what his symptoms are and he replies, "I get these blinding headaches; kind of like a knife across my scalp and..". He is interrupted by the doctor, "And a heavy throbbing right behind the left ear". "Yes! Exactly! How did you know?" "Well I am the world's greatest headache specialist, you know. But I myself suffered from that same type of headache for many years. It is caused by a tension in the scalp muscles. This is how I cured it: Every day I would give my wife oral sex. When she came she would squeeze her legs together with all her strength and the pressure would relieve the tension in my head. Try that every day for two weeks and come back and let me know how it goes". Two weeks go by and the man is back, "Well, how do you feel?" "Doc, I'm a new man! I feel great! I haven't had a headache since I started this treatment! I can't thank you enough. And, by the way you have a lovely home." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Costello: Hey, Abbot! Abbot: Yes, Lou? Costello: I just got my first computer. Abbot: That's great Lou. What did you get? Costello: A Pentium II-266, with 40 Megs of RAM, a 2.1 Gig hard drive, and a 24X CD-ROM. Abbot: That's terrific, Lou. Costello: But I don't know what any of it means! Abbot: You will in time. Costello: That's exactly why I am here to see you. Abbot: Oh? Costello: I heard that you are a real computer expert. Abbot: Well, I don't know- Costello: Yes-sir-ee. You know your stuff. And you're going to train me. Abbot: Really? Costello: Uh huh. And I am here for my first lesson. Abbot: O.K. Lou. What do want to know? Costello: I am having no problem turning it on, but I heard that you should be very careful how you turn it off. Abbot: That's true. Costello: So, here I am working on my new computer and I want to turn it off. What do I do? Abbot: Well, first you press the Start button, and then- Costello: No, I told you, I want to turn it off. Abbot: I know, you press the Start button- Costello: Wait a second. I want to turn it Off. I know how to start it. So tell me what to do. Abbot: I did. Costello: When? Abbot: When I told you to press the Start button. Costello: Why should I press the Start button? Abbot: To shut off the computer. Costello: I press Start to stop. Abbot: Well Start doesn't actually stop the computer. Costello: I knew it! So what do I press? Abbot: Start. Costello: Start what? Abbot: Start button. Costello: Start button to do what? Abbot: Shut down. Costello: You don't have to get rude! Abbot: No, no, no! That's not what I meant. Costello: Then say what you mean. Abbot: To shut down the computer, press- Costello: Don't say, "Start!" Abbot: Then what do you want me to say? Costello: Look, if I want to turn off the computer, I am willing to press the Stop button, the End button and Cease and Desist button, but no one in their right mind presses the Start to Stop. Abbot: But that's what you do. Costello: And you probably Go at Stop signs, and Stop at green lights. Abbot: Don't be ridiculous. Costello: I'm being ridiculous? Well. I think it's about time we started this conversation. Abbot: What are you talking about? Costello: I am starting this conversation right now. Good-bye. ----------------------------------------------------------------- One day a guy dies and finds himself in hell. As he is wallowing in despair, he has his first meeting with a demon... Demon: Why so glum? Guy: What do you think? I'm in hell! Demon: Hell's not so bad. We actually have a lot of fun down here......you a drinking man? Guy: Sure, I love to drink. Demon: Well you're gonna love Mondays then. On Mondays that's all we do is drink. Whiskey, tequila, Guinness, wine coolers...we drink till we throw up and then we drink some more! Guy: Gee that sounds great. Demon: You a smoker? Guy: You better believe it! Demon: All right! You're gonna love Tuesdays. We get the finest cigars from all over the world and smoke our lungs out. If you get cancer -no biggie, you're already dead. Guy: Wow...that's...awesome! Demon: I bet you like to gamble. Guy: Why yes, as a matter of fact I do. Demon: Cause Wednesdays you can gamble all you want. Craps, Blackjack, Roulette, Poker, Slots, whatever. If you go bankrupt...well, you're dead anyhow. Demon: You into drugs? Guy: Are you kidding? Love drugs! You don't mean... Demon: That's right! Thursday is drug day. Help yourself to a great big bowl of crack, or smack. Smoke a doobie the size of a submarine. You can do all the drugs you want. You're dead who cares! O.D.!! Guy: WOW !! I never realized Hell was such a cool place!! Demon: You gay? Guy: Heck No.... Demon: "Ooooh," (grimaces) "Then You're gonna hate Fridays." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday morning, the pastor noticed little Alex was staring up at the large plaque that hung in the foyer of the church honoring those who had been killed fighting in wars. The seven-year-old had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the pastor walked up, stood beside the boy, and said quietly, 'Good morning, Alex.' 'Good morning,' replied the boy, focused on the plaque. 'Pastor McGee, what is this?' 'Well son, these are all the people who have died in the service,' replied the pastor. Soberly, they stood together, staring at the large plaque. Little Alex's voice barely broke the silence when he asked quietly, 'Which one, the 9:00 or the 10:30 service?' *********************************************** The preceding was a product of the"Military Collector Group Post", an international email magazine dedicated to the preservation of history and the equipment that made it. Unlimited circulation of this material is authorized so long as the proper credits to the original authors, and publisher or this group are included. For more information concerning this group or membership contact Dennis Starks at, . A list of selected articles of interest to members can be seen at: http://www.softcom.net/users/buzz/backmail.html ***********************************************