[David Dunlop]

The fact that none of the three COIL, AERIAL TUNING UNIT No. 2A’s I have owned over the years have ever had any trace at all of a ‘Canada Decal’ on the front panel of them has always puzzled me .All three units had been overhauled at the Shop Level at some point post-war, and white bordered, none luminous decals had been applied to them, so I just assumed the original Canada Decals had been lost in the overhaul work.

I started thinking about this last weekend again and wondered if any early war photos of the 52-Set in service would ever turn up showing the COIL Assembly with a Canada Decal somewhere on the front of it, to solve the mystery once and for all. Then I remembered the early 1944 evaluation of the C15TA, to determine what was needed for it to fit inside a Hamilcar Glider. That evaluation had also included a study of the installations of both the Wireless Set No. 52 and the Wireless Set No. 19 HP Canadian in the C15TA. A three in one evaluation as it were.

I pulled my copy of that evaluation and went through the photos of the installed 52-Set. Bingo! There it was, a full front photo of the complete set installed along the right rear side of the C15TA.

The Canada Decal on the Receiver was obscured by the droop in the rolled up waterproof cover along the top of the Carriers No. 4. The Canada Decal on the Supply Unit can just be seen sticking up from behind the large square power plug near the bottom of the Supply, and the Canada Decal can be clearly seen, just to the right of the Access Door Hinge upper right corner. No Canada Decal at all can be seen anywhere on the COIL, AERIAL TUNING UNIT No. 2A. So clearly, these Coils never got Canada Decals, either by deliberate intent for some as yet unknown reason, or perhaps more likely, simple mistaken oversight. The end result is the same at this point; I no longer have to be concerned about adding one to my Coil assembly. Just to be on the safe side, I checked the illustrations of all four components in the Master Parts Lists. No Canada Decal on the COIL front panel there either, but the other three are all clearly noted,

The other interesting thing with this photo is the rolled up Waterproof Curtain. It is described in the Master Parts Lists as being Olive Green in colour. This colour to my mind’s eye has always been a very dark shade of green as commonly seen on a lot of post war military vehicles. On that basis, the Waterproof Cover should jump right out at you in a photograph when beside the No. 2 Brown wrinkle finish noted to be the standard colour for the 52-Set Carriers No. 4 in the Parts Lists. Not so in the photo attached. The rolled up curtain definitely has a darker tone than the metalwork of the Carriers No. 4, but not even close to what I expected. Then I remembered wartime CMP colors and that the light green colour used for them was often referred to either as Khaki Green, or Olive Green and the look they both referred to was very much like your typical pimento stuffed green pickled olives you find in a store today. With that in mind, the contrast between the rolled up curtain and the Carriers No. 4 metalwork in this photo makes much more sense to me. Hopefully, that lighter Olive Green canvas duck is still available today.

David