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Vintage Radio (domestic) Domestic vintage radio (wireless) receivers only.

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Old 14th Dec 2018, 1:20 pm   #1
David G4EBT
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Default Wartime Civilian Receiver V German Kleinempfänger

Not to labour the point as to whether or not the WCR came close to the design brief of using the minimum of materials and labour, there are two current forum threads about the German 'People's Radio of 1938 - the 'Deutscher Kleinempfänger DKE38' - 'German Small Radio'. No doubt the design brief was similar - 'A minimum of scarce materials and labour, with a reasonable performance' - it's main purpose in life being to enable German people to listen to propaganda broadcasts. (its predecessor the '301' was introduced as a simple affordable radio in 1933).

I thought it would be interesting to see to what extent the DKE38 matched up to the design brief as compared to the WCR, bearing in mind that Wireless World and later the BBC had originally proposed a simple 2-Valve TRF. Whereas the WCR went well beyond that concept, the DKE38 fully lived up to the brief. That said, the DKE38 went into production in 1938/39, but the WCR not until July 1944 towards the end of the war.

In contrast to the WCR, the DKE38 doesn't have a metal chassis - just a sheet of Paxolin. It has neither a mains transformer nor an output transformer. (It uses a 'reed' speaker).The speaker frame isn't metal - it's compressed cardboard - probably a mixture of wood fibres and glue. There are no IFTs - it's a TRF set. It used 5 resistors, 1 pot, 9 caps and Paxolin tuning cap ganged to a switch. The electrolytic caps aren't encased with metal, but card. It's hard to see how a radio could be more minimalist and economical to produce, yet and still live up to the other part of the brief - reasonable performance.

Another aspect of wartime economies, was the amount of power the set used.

The DKE38 used just 15 Watts. I don't know what the WCR consumed, but quite a lot more would be my guess.

The only debatable design aspect of the DKE38 is that it used a Bakelite cabinet, and quite an elegant one at that, whereas the WCR used a basic low-grade plywood box which would have been much cheaper and less energy intensive to make from plentiful native timber. That said, the production of the WCR was limited to just 175,000 mains sets and 75,000 battery sets so tooling up for a Bakelite cabinet would have been out of the question. I've no idea what the production run of the DKE38 was, but I can well imagined that it ran to millions. What isn't immediately obvious from pictures, is its small size. In contrast to the much larger WCR, I believe that the DKE38 is just 9" square and 4.5" deep.

There's a Youtube video of one where the economies are clearly apparent - not least the 'cardboard' speaker frame and the Paxolin panel 'chassis':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL6EVgRjNuo

There's a very well written and interesting article including the circuit, by Lorne Clark at this link:

http://earlywireless.com/dke38_picinfo.htm

Another well written and illustrated write-up here at 'Phil's Old Radios':

There's an article on wiki too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger

Apparently, the DKE38s could be picked up at German flea markets for a few Euro not so many years ago, but I guess they now command prices far beyond their worth. All in all, a fascinating little set, with an interesting back-story.The radio gained the nickname 'Goebbel's Schnauze' [Snout], sometimes 'Geobbel's Gob', referring to the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, who often addressed the public through radio.

Hope that's of interest.
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Old 14th Dec 2018, 2:18 pm   #2
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Default Re: Wartime Civilian Receiver V German Kleinempfänger

Quote:
Originally Posted by David G4EBT View Post
it's main purpose in life being to enable German people to listen to propaganda broadcasts. (its predecessor the '301' was introduced as a simple affordable radio in 1933).
Another interesting write-up David. I think you'll find that the DKE was also intended just to be a simple affordable radio. Some people claim that it's sensitivity was limited so that only propaganda broadcasts could be received and no foreign stations. However unlike in England, good-quality radios were available in Germany until the end of the war. This one for example:
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/mende_..._gehaeuse.html
In any case a lot of good radios still existed from pre-war times. There was no problem receiving foreign stations (apart from the fact that listening to the enemy was illegal) so there wasn't much to be gained by limiting the sensitivity of the DKE. It was intended to be a second set and was actually cheaper than buying a decent extension loudspeaker. This had the advantage that wifey could listen to Musik while you Arbeit on the DKE whilst doing the ironing whilst the man of the family listened to something different in another room. It was more a case of being as good as it needed to be rather than as bad as they could get away with. DKEs were still in production until 1953 under the name Edly, and there are even much sought after Hungarian versions of them.
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Old 15th Dec 2018, 10:29 am   #3
1100 man
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Default Re: Wartime Civilian Receiver V German Kleinempfänger

Having become intimately acquainted with the VE301, I have been very impressed by the quality of construction. There has been no attempt to cut corners to reduce materials or cost. Plated steel chassis, mains transformer, intervalve transformer, quality components, large metal speaker. Even the RF valve is mounted in an acoustically isolated socket. I was amazed that all 5 capacitors in the metal capacitor case tested perfectly for leakage & value- after 80 years!

The DKE38, on the other hand, has very obviously been designed with economies of materials in mind.

Bakelite cabinets might well have made more sense than wood. There would not have been much spare labour to make radios and once tooling had been made, a bakelite cabinet would require much less labour to make than a wooden one. I'm sure a very small workforce could have turned out thousands of cabinets in a week.

The WCR undoubtedly had too many non- technical people involved in the decisions that were made and it took too long to get it into production. What might have started as a simple idea, would have gradually have got more complicated as the committee members' personal pet ideas got incorporated. Many members would have had shares in companies supplying components so would be keen to incorporate ideas that would benefit these companies.
Not all ideas are adopted on their technical merit!

All very interesting to speculate though,

Cheers
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Old 15th Dec 2018, 5:16 pm   #4
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Default Re: Wartime Civilian Receiver V German Kleinempfänger

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Originally Posted by 1100 man View Post
Having become intimately acquainted with the VE301, I have been very impressed by the quality of construction. There has been no attempt to cut corners to reduce materials or cost. Plated steel chassis, mains transformer, intervalve transformer, quality components, large metal speaker. Even the RF valve is mounted in an acoustically isolated socket. I was amazed that all 5 capacitors in the metal capacitor case tested perfectly for leakage & value- after 80 years!
I guess that would depend on how they were tested. If a simple low voltage resistance measurement then yes they may appear to have no leakage.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 1100 man View Post
The WCR undoubtedly had too many non- technical people involved in the decisions that were made and it took too long to get it into production. What might have started as a simple idea, would have gradually have got more complicated as the committee members' personal pet ideas got incorporated. Many members would have had shares in companies supplying components so would be keen to incorporate ideas that would benefit these companies.
Not all ideas are adopted on their technical merit!
All very interesting to speculate though,
Cheers
Nick
And it is speculation.

There were, according to the radio Museum, 282 versions of the VE301 including both Bakelite and wooden cabinet ones, mains and battery, with many variations in circuit and components, so it was hardly a unified design.

The main difference between the German and the British Wartime Civilian sets was the fact that the German one was an early outdated 1920's TRF design, whereas the British radio was a far superior superhet design making it more reliable and easier to use with the single tuning control. Compared to the smaller German one with the moving iron speaker, the audio quality of the British radio was far better by virtue of the moving coil speaker that was used.

Mike
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