[turretslug]

Picture 3 in post 5 has answered a long-term puzzle- as a kid, I acquired a compact British-made IF strip, passed onto me by a military tech, and the upper left hand corner of that shot is exactly it- if so, it'll be 6x CV138 (EF91) VHF (45MHz?) amp stages folowed by CV140 (EB91) detector and CV136 (EL91) cathode follower "video" output to the adjacent coax cable. The round items between them with a small oval detail being the trimmer cores and the alternating triangular thingies each containing 3x 1nF "Metalmites"! Unfortunately, I dismantled it long, long ago. I suppose the post-war replacement/equivalent for the likes of the famous EF50-laden Pye strip.

One thing that I've always found slightly amusing/puzzling about quite a lot of older avionics kit in particular is that some aspects of it will be almost ludicrously overbuilt, with almost trifling weight savings made elsewhere and this is a good example- that hefty great enclosure casting (?) like a particularly beefy beer keg, and then a few grams of weight shaved with the internal chassis punchings. I suppose it convinces those appraising it that some effort has been made.