WWII CANADIAN WIRELESS No 58*, 1944

Made by the Canadians to replace the W.S. 18 but not officially adopted by the British.
The Mk 1 Star, replaced the earlier Mk1 with minor differences, the main one, being it had round corners instead of square.
Some changes were also made to the control panel.

Your comments:

• Our scout group managed to get their hands on one of these sets, in the fifties, which also came with a backpack, carrying wet accumulators and a vibrator pack to generate the necessary voltages, the pack also included a 9v Grid Bias battery to allow for compensation for valve heaters, etc also there was a further pack that carried dry batteries. This pack also had a deep lid with foam insert to carry a set of spare BG9 sized valves for field maintenance. These power packs plugged into the control unit via the same plug/socket arrangement. Noted in your picture, the lid has a push-rod assembly that operates the PTT switch on the panel, once the pack was set up and tuned, and the lid then closed, so the unit could be operated as a man-pack with webbing harness, etc.
  The antenna was a series of rods that slotted into a swivel mount on the side of the transceiver. The set operated between 6.0 and 9.0 Megacycles, as they were then known probably with about 5 watts output. Beautifully engineered, when compared to the British equivalent of the 18 set, it had two headsets and fist mics, so the operator and the platoon commander could operate the set. I would love to have access to this set today, for I became a licensed radio amateur operator in the mid-eighties and this set would work the forty metre band in AM mode.
  .......... Duncan Tribute, Truro, Cornwall, 13th of August 2011
  
  

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