Civilian Wartime Receiver

[Sparks]

That is what I always think when I see two valves sharing one screen dropper and decoupling capacitor.    Only a few pence, but over thousands of sets produced, it all mounts up.    
Bob

[Sparks]

On completing the wiring, and switching on, I found that it didn't work, although there was a faint whistling and howling, plus a few faint station whistles intermingled with distorted speech and music.    On checking the wiring, I noted that I had inadvertently omitted the screen decoupling capacitor from the 6V6 output stage.     Once I fitted it, the volume was very loud, but it was completely unstable, with uncontrollable howling and whistling with distorted speech and music.     After about forty minutes checking the wiring, I saw that I had not earthed the metalising pin on the EF39 intermediate amplifier.     As soon as I earthed it, the set became stable.    It is now performing excellently with numerous stations received in daylight.    More than adequate volume, excellent selectivity and good tone.
Bob
   

[Terry]

I am fascinated by that blatantly German standard socket in a British wartime receiver!

Did DIN even exist then?

[Sparks]

Probably not! There was a hole in the chassis that originally held an electrolytic, and the two pin DIN fitted perfectly into it as the speaker socket. As I said earlier, I am not at all concerned about the lack of historic accuracy I just rebuilt it for the pleasure of getting it working again, but the wiring layout, even some of the component values have been changed simply because I did not have the correct values. It was only fit for the rubbish tip, and that is where it would probably have ended if I hadn't chanced on it. I beieve it is now good for another 75 years.
Bob

[Crackle]

Well done, it always amuses me how simple and basic the cabinets are. When I first saw one I thought it was home made from second hand floor boards.
It took me ages to find the one I wanted, it had to be a particular type. I cant believe how many ebay sellers I had to ask for the serial number or a photo of the back of the chassis. Yes it had to have a serial number beginning U32, made by KB of course.
   
   
as received
   

Unfortunately when I came to try it a year or so later the mains transformer was faulty so I had to replace it with another manufacturers transformer, which I was lucky to get from another forum member.
This is how my chassis looks after changing the transformer.
   
Mike

[ppppenguin]

The whole idea was that these sets could be made cheaply and using the minimum amount of materials that might be useful for the was effort. Not surprising that the cases were made from just about any timber that came to hand.

[Sparks]

Very nice cabinet, mine is not as good as that. Considering they werte utility sets, I really think they went over the top with that massive transformer. In fact I wonder why they had an isolation transformer at all, and didn't go for live chassis type, as that sort of thing didn't seem to bother many folk right up until the 1960s!
Bob

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
The set was designed by G.D. Reynolds from Murphy Radio. They were made by a big list of British Manufacturers and were each designated a code letter for dealers to pinpoint each manufacturer. There were some slight differences between all of them but held the same basic circuit. The Battery version is much rarer than the mains version of which a surprising are thought to survive. Mains transformer failure is often due to the rectifier valve collapsing internally.
The British Utility set was far superior to the German Volksempfänger, it was insensitive and primitive, of course as Hitler didn't want the natives to listen to BBC propaganda, the German set actually can sell for a lot of money, I wonder why?

[ppppenguin]

The Volksempfänger and its little brother the Kleinempfanger were designed solely for listening Goebbels' radio. As Trevor said, they didn't want their good aryan populus listening to muck from the BBC.

A lot of these sets were brought back to the UK by British servicemen as trophies. The eagle and swastika logo was often ground off. Hardly surprising since if you'd just been fighting the nazis you didn't want too many reminders of the hated swastika in your home. The result is that unmolested sets are relatively rare in the UK and hence more valuable.

[Sparks]

I have a battery version of the Civilian Wartime Receiver, although I did not discover that it was one for some time. It doesn't have a case, just the chassis. I have a feeling it has Mazda Octal valves. The frequency changer coils had been damaged, and I made a new frequency changer using RF chokes and the set works very well. When I was at school in the 50s, I had a German "People's Radio" complete with the swastika. From memory, it only had two valves, but was was either a double, or a triple inside one glass envelope, the other was the rectifier. It had variometer tuning. I did get it working, but eventually took it to pieces and have no idea where the parts went!
Bob