View Single Post
Old 26th Sep 2018, 8:03 pm   #5
trh01uk
Octode
 
trh01uk's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, UK.
Posts: 1,648
Default Re: Rectangular 8-Pin Plug and Socket Connectors

David,

I have never seen these connectors on any other equipment - but that only shows that my experience is limited of course! They may well have been used in many places.

The WS9 is not well known in the UK. I have only ever seen one WS9 full Tx/Rx here in the UK, and only once seen the separate WS9 remote receiver. And I have been around in vintage military wireless since 1993. Obviously someone, somewhere will have a British WS9, and would be able to answer your question about what the markings are on the back of the connectors (if you can persuade them to take the thing apart!).

They might be marked "STC", but more likely they will not be marked at all. This is total guesswork, but my knowledge of pre-WWII sets suggests that they might well have not been moulded items, where its easy to mould in little "features" like the name of the manufacturer. Its quite possible that the connectors were hand made, possibly machined out of solid plastic for the early British WS9 set. Its possible that CMC then productionised the British set, and would have tooled up to make these connectors. But as I say this is guesswork, based on the idea that pre-WWII nearly all Army radios in the UK were made by some sort of "cottage industry". Until WWII got going, no-one in the British Army took wireless seriously - it literally seemed to be a "set of toys for the boys". So they designed tanks which it was impossible to fit a radio into to (see the WS7 for that disaster!).

I think they only realised how stupid they were, when the Germans demonstrated their "Blitzkreig" tactics and swept through Belgium and France, and that depended heavily on every tank being in radio contact with the command (and possibly too the infantry on the ground). This mode of warfare was unknown I think until the Germans demonstrated it. The result was a desperate rush in the UK to get troops equipped with radio - hence the WS19, which was reportedly a 6 week rush job at Pye in Cambridge, UK.

Your mention of high voltage/current on these connectors made me smile. When I was 15, I designed a mains power supply to fit into a scrap WS52 power supply chassis. The initial version produced some 2000V, way over the original 1200V design. The result was total break down of the connector, flash over in other words. So 1200V is probably its limit.

Richard
trh01uk is offline