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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 1:24 pm   #1
Rod H
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Default Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

I'm currently restoring a Philips superhet radio for a friend of a family member, as they have a strong sentimental attachment to it, the set having originally been used by their own family in the Irish Republic in the mid to late 1940s. According to the chassis plate, the model identity is BIF 372U, but I'm unable to find any meaningful information from the Trader Sheet Index. There is a battery model 372B listed, but it bears no resemblance and is also a TRF rather than superhet.

However, with a bit of research, I've established the set is virtually identical to a Philips 658U dated around 1946, the only noticeable difference being the 372U does not have a back panel mounted two pin mains plug/socket arrangement (the power lead is wired directly into the set) and the glass tuning scale looks as though it was intended for the Irish market, as on MW it has Dublin, Cork and Athlone clearly marked, and refers to the UK nationals by their country identity (eg England Light Programme, W.England, Scottish, Wales, etc). Again, the Trader index isn't particularly helpful, although I have managed to find a circuit diagram together with service manual, but written in Dutch!

A fair amount of the lettering on the tuning scale is either badly worn away or missing altogether - I guess someone has tried cleaning it in the past and washed away the print, so I'm going to have my work cut out to get around this problem, if at all it can be done as a DIY exercise.

One mystery though, and perhaps someone on here can enlighten me. On the tuning scale there is a solid band marker from 200-220m wavelength marked as "O.C. Nationals" and I have no idea what this means. I have similarly noticed that the scale on a 658U also shows stations pre-fixed with "O.C.", but instead of stating "nationals", it gives 3 specific station identities (Suomi, Sverige and Belgium) - see as circled in the attachment. It's not something I ever recall seeing on any other sets to date.

Question therefore, what does "O.C." stand for in this context?

Any help much appreciated. I have also attached a couple of pictures of the set in question

Rod
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 2:16 pm   #2
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

The dial spellings suggest that the radio was not primarily intended for the U.K. or Irish markets.
O.C. may be a reference to Short wave, where the abbreviation is often used in such as Italian (Onda Corto) and similarly in, I think Spanish and other languages.
Suomi is a Finnish language, I believe.
Strange, nevertheless.
No doubt one of our linguistics experts will elucidate us in this matter. Tony
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 2:21 pm   #3
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

IF normally means that it was built by Philips Ireland (Irish Freestate).

OC normally stands for the French Ondes Courtes (SW) but I've no idea what that's doing on an Irish tuning scale. It's not impossible that Philips Ireland made sets for export to Francophone countries, but if so it's the first I've heard of it.

Interesting set.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 3:09 pm   #4
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Suomi is Finnish for Finland. Sverige is Swedish for Sweden. I would guess that Belg. is an abbreviation of both the French and Flemish names for Belgium (so as not to offend either group). Hence that part of the dial seems to be aimed at nationals of those countries. The rest of the dial seems to use native spellings rather than English spellings for 'continental' stations.

My guess is that this set was intended for immediately post-war Europe when lots of people had been displaced from their home country. Were there stations set up by the Allies in that frequency region to broadcast to citizens overseas? If you were going to set up a station then the HF end of the MW band would need a shorter antenna so easier to rig. Could the O of OC mean 'occupying'? Or perhaps 'overseas'?
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 3:59 pm   #5
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

I think that scale says that national broadcasts for Finland, Sweden and Belgium can be found around the 16 Metre band and Sweden again around the 20 Metre band, O.C. is as has been said, foreign for shortwave.

Lawrence.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 4:03 pm   #6
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

I don't know whether it is relevant to supporting the idea of the OC markings being relevant to occupied country services; but I believe that the WWII / post-war BBC services to Europe were usually organised by language with the exceptions of Belgium which had an alternating day Flemish (Dutch) and French language service (hence a marking of Belg. rather than a language marker) and Radio Londres supporting the geographical French region.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 4:29 pm   #7
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

"Droitwich" is marked at 1500m fair enough, but what is "England" doing at around 1800m?
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 5:03 pm   #8
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Quote:
Originally Posted by rambo1152 View Post
"Droitwich" is marked at 1500m fair enough, but what is "England" doing at around 1800m?
European Service from Ottringham is all I can come up with, have a shufftie down this lot (1945-1957):

http://www.bbceng.info/Technical%20R...m_tx_nw_6a.pdf

Lawrence.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 5:42 pm   #9
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

The dial layout strongly suggests to me that the OC stations were MW.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 6:17 pm   #10
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

I seem to recollect that in about 1946 there was an agreement to regularise the european radio frequencies. I think it was called "The Copenhagan Plan"
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 6:27 pm   #11
Rod H
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Thank you all for your comments - all very helpful. I think Paul's comment regarding the "BIF" prefix does indeed suggest the set will have been built by Philips for Ireland (and possibly manufactured there?).

I think I may have confused matters by posting a picture of the scale from a model 658U (found on the web), not from the Irish set (372U). As I mentioned, the scale from the Irish set has only a fraction of the lettering left, as I imagine someone has tried to clean it, and a fair amount of detective work is needed to decipher what bits are left. However, I've now attached a scan of this scale so you can see the extent of the problem (only the MW portion has anything left, LW and SW have completely gone!).

Also, I got it a little wrong when I said the scale on this set had the marking "O.C. Nationals". On looking again at the faded lettering, I think the correct wording is possibly "O.C. Internationals". If O.C stands for shortwave, I like the theory that these would be SW stations also being broadcast on MW. How on earth Joe public would know the meaning of "O.C". on the scale of an Irish set beats me though!

Rod
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 7:03 pm   #12
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Philips country codes indicate the country of manufacture - 'G' is the UK, 'D' is (West) Germany, 'IF' is Ireland etc. Philips export sets were normally made in Eindhoven and have an 'X' country code.

Philips had factories all over the world at one time. To some extent this was to tailor products to specific markets, but a more important factor was the hefty import tariffs imposed on radios by most countries before the 70s. Local manufacture avoided these. Pye had a big factory on the outskirts of Dublin for the Irish market.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 7:28 pm   #13
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

O.C. Internat. on the BX272U:

http://www.bendijkman.nl/index.php/a...al-dial-bx272u

Lawrence.
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Old 2nd Nov 2018, 9:42 pm   #14
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

It looks like another job for laser waterslide, but on this one you may have to invent the correct lettering to go on there.
For encouragement, below are some photos from an attempt I made to recreate a dial from practically nothing.
The samples I found of dials of other radios were not large enough to be used as suitable for printing directly so I decided to draw the dial myself. It took some time (ages) to do. The most difficult part was finding fonts to match the original as close as possible.

After mounting the waterslide onto the new glass, it was sprayed with lacquer. Then I masked the text area ready to spray a pale cream colour on to the back to mask the edges.

But in the end I think it came out OK.
The original dial
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The new dial drawing
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The finished dial
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The radio
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good luck with it

Mike
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Old 3rd Nov 2018, 10:29 pm   #15
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Interesting question, this OC.
First observation is that the regular stations from the different countries are all mentioned on the central part of the dial, including Finland (Helsinki, Kuopio), Sweden (Stockholm) and Belgium (Bruxelles).
The three OC-marked tuning ranges are instead referring to the countries in their local spelling (Suomi=Finland, Sverige=Sweden) although Belgium is in English (it should be eiter Belgiƫ or Belgique; possibly this is done as a place-saving compromise).
Thirdly, the OC-marked areas are at the extreme end of the Medium Waves tuning range.

So although I formally have no clue what it means, I would tend to think that at least the C refers to Coverage. Where there possibly small/local stations where the set did not guarantee proper reception because they were on the edge of the receiver tuning range? And the O than e.g. Occasional? Just speculating!

Other than that: you can find an English service manual of the BX685U on the French site Doctsf!

Cheers, Pieter
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Old 3rd Nov 2018, 11:05 pm   #16
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

As most members will surely know OC= Onda Corta, i.e Short Wave, and OM = Onda media (Medium Wave). Since the station lists at either end of the dial are for 49, 31, & ?25 metre bands stations, my guess is that OC simply means Short Wave.
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Old 3rd Nov 2018, 11:59 pm   #17
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

It makes sense if they were stations on the SW band (which might well be labelled "OC" on a set if it was intended for use in a non-English speaking country; more probably somewhere in Southern Europe, as the words for "short" in most of the Northern European languages begin with a K) but that were marked among the MW stations for reasons of space.

EDIT: I can see both "Bruxelles" and "Brussel" among the station names; I guess the former would be French-speaking and the latter Belgian-speaking. "Belg." could be either "Belgique" or "Belgiƫ" (perhaps it was a bilingual station, or alternated by day).
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Last edited by julie_m; 4th Nov 2018 at 12:11 am. Reason: Added paragraph
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Old 4th Nov 2018, 12:27 am   #18
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

None of this speculation answers the question as to why Philips Ireland were producing such an odd tuning scale. I'm not aware that Philips Ireland ever produced sets for non-Irish markets. The main purpose of Philips Ireland at that time was to avoid paying import duties on sets imported from Eindhoven or the UK. There would be no advantage in making sets for export there, as they would attract the same duties as radios produced in Britain and the Netherlands.
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Old 4th Nov 2018, 12:52 am   #19
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

They could have made sets for export just to keep the production lines busy. An organisation the size of Philips might well have moved production about depending on demand. There already would have been a fair overlap of inventory -- the valves would be the same, even if the power transformer/dropper resistor, coils and scale glass were different. Even import duties might well have been a lesser Op.Ex. than keeping a factory running below full capacity.
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Old 4th Nov 2018, 9:36 pm   #20
Rod H
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Default Re: Philips Radio and Tuning Scale Mystery

Thank you again for your additional and interesting comments. Just to reiterate, the tuning scale pictured in my original post (#1) is from a Philips 658U, whereas we've now established that the model BIF-372U under discussion is of Irish origin, and although the cabinet is the same as the 658U, the tuning scale is clearly different (see post #11). It's just a shame that much of the lettering has been wiped away, probably as a result of someone's attempt to clean it.

This means if I'm to restore the set to something reasonably presentable, a reproduction scale will be needed. As I'm most unlikely to find any other set like this one to copy, my only option is to work with what I've got (which isn't much!).

I therefore set about theorizing what a complete original scale would have looked like using the washed out scale as a starting point and taking pointers from other Philips sets of the same family (predominantly the 658U). I then spent many hours (far too many in fact!) reproducing a scale using Open Office Draw, superimposing the design over the remnants of the original scale using partial transparency mode to keep everything properly sized. This has been quite an interesting exercise and required a lot of detective work regarding station names and frequencies, hence my question on O.C. station idents. I searched all the fonts available in the drawing program, and found one which was virtually identical (which was Nirmala UI). I think it's now perfected to as good as I can get it, so the next step will be to produce it as an inkjet transparency. I'm thinking I may be able to attach the transparency to the back of the glass using optically clear double side adhesive film (note the set has edge lit glass to illuminate the scale). I'll let you know how I get on, but for the moment the focus of my attention will be on getting the set working.

I have attached a copy of the scale reproduction, which for convenience I exported from Open Office as a pdf. I have also attached a copy of the damaged original scale for comparison.

Rod
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