[David Dunlop]

A nice, hard, flat work surface with a 90-degree front edge can be your best friend when trying to remove the Holders assembly from the Microphone Case. Over the years, fine dust infiltrates the case and finds its way into the two grooves either side of the Holder that slot over the two side ridges in the case. Just enough to make it tricky to get the Holders free and out.

If you turn the Case upside down and hold it at the Spring Contacts end, you can give it a few good, flat whacks on the surface of your work surface and watch the Holders at the slots to see it slowly sliding up on the ridges. Eventually, you can carefully pinch the outer edges of the two Contact Spring assemblies with one hand, and hook a finger of the other hand under the Microphone Cord by the Grommet and gently lever the Holders out of the Microphone Case to work on. With this first Headgear Type 10, I was not so lucky. First off, as noted earlier, the Inset was stuck in the Holder making it difficult to access the Holder itself. The same whacking technique eventually paid off, however. The Insert slowly started to move up in the Holder and the Holder up in the Case. I was eventually able to grab the top rim of the Insert with one hand and pull up on it while pressing the top rim of the Holder back down with the other hand, and the Insert pulled free. Then I could repeat the whacking to release the Holder assembly.

To get access to the terminal posts for the wiring along the top of the Holder you have to separate the upper Holder piece from its Lower Plates. The first step in this process is to remove the two wires connected to the Upper Holder at Positions 1 (single black trace) and 7 (single red trace). Position 1 is just a Terminal Screw and lock washer. Undoing the Terminal Screw at Position 7, however, also releases the Contract Spring for the Insert Case mounted at that location. Don’t lose it.

Then you can turn the Holders assembly over and remove the two RH Screws top and bottom that hold the two parts of the assembly together. The Holder can then be lifted away from the wiring. This time, as you can, see in the photos, the Holder came away in two parts, so I had to dig out a complete replacement Holder assembly. That was annoying enough, but the real mystery was finding a Jumper Wire running from Terminal 1 up to Terminal 4, for the Relay. That made no sense as it would turn the Relay Circuit permanently on, which was what was happening with this particular Headgear. Note in the third photo, this Jumper Wire is typical white loomed with a red/black tracer, typical of 19-Set and 52-Set production.

This discovery meant I had to open up the other Headgear Type 10, that was working just fine, and see what was going on inside it. In the last two photos, you can see this particular Jumper Cable was a solid black plastic loom, more typical of late war production. This Jumper Wire connected Terminal 1 to Terminal 3, which made much more sense and actually resulted in a fully working Headgear assembly. So when I started transferring the wiring from the broken Holder to the new replacement, the Jumper Wire was repositioned to Terminal 3 at its top end. That process was started in the third photo today, with the clear view of the Jumper Wire.


David