WW2 Canadian Wireless Valve Testers

[David Dunlop]

Hello Bruce McMillan. It’s me again.

I am wondering this time if you can confirm some wiring information for me on your Stark adapter? I would like to try and match the colours used by Stark and if I match starting at the B9G socket, I will be working backwards to the Octal Plug and it can fall into place easily enough at that point.

(1) The cable I am working with has 8 coloured wires as follows: white, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, brown and black. I think 7 of those are a match for the wiring on the Stark. The exception should be my ‘white’ would be a purple wire on the Stark.
(2) What coloured wires start off from the Octal Plug to the pins of the B9G socket? That is the busiest socket for connections and once it is sorted, I can follow through with the other sockets easily enough from the wiring diagram and socket photo you provided earlier.
(3) Line 8 from the Octal Plug shows feeding to both Pin 5 and Pin 8 of the B9G socket and then off to Pin 8 on the Mazda Octal socket. I can see there is a jumper between Pins 5 and 8 on the B9G, but I cannot tell if the wire from the Octal Plug goes to Pin 5 first, jumps to Pin 8 and then to the Mazda, or if it starts at Pin 8, jumps to Pin 5 and then off to the Mazda. I suspect the former but need your observations of the original Stark.


If you can confirm the above three items for me Bruce, the wiring part of my work can begin.

Best regards,

David

[Bob Carriere]

I thought wiring my C15a was tricky and I had a new repro harness with all the correct colors!!!!!

I am waiting for the sssszzzzit Poof!!!!!

Make sure you work stool is isolated......

Bob C

[Bruce MacMillan]

From the plug:
pin 1 brown
pin 2 red
pin 3 orange
pin 4 yellow
pin 5 green
pin 6 blue
pin 7 purple
pin 8 grey

on the b9g socket
pin 1 brown
pin 2 red
pin 3 orange
pin 4 yellow
pin 5 jumper to pin 8
pin 6 blue
pin 7 purple
pin 8 grey
pin 9 green

all 8 wires from the plug go to the b9g socket.

it's interesting that this mod/add-on is official but no documentation has been found. Probably something base 202 workshop conjured up.

[David Dunlop]

Woot, woot!

That is fantastic, Bruce, thank you so much! I shall start mapping it all out on paper this weekend, and then the games can begin. I will substitute my white for the purple run and my black for the grey,

This is going to be fun, looking at the B9G and the Mazda again, I realized I am going to have to be careful in positioning the wire runs to avoid cutting across the bottom of the central locating pin holes, to avoid accidentally blocking them. Lots of considerations and care now.

David

[David Dunlop]

The Wrinkle Black paint finish has now been applied to the case. It came out with a very nice wrinkle on the bottom surface. The vertical sides are more of a Black Granite Crystal appearance, but that's OK.

David

[David Dunlop]

The rubber feet are now in place on the bottom of the case, the Protectors, Cable installed on the side and all the hardware locked in position.

I think it is starting to look rather business like now.

David

[David Dunlop]

The next phase of this project is going to be the wiring in of the four sockets.

Now that the colour coding for all the connections has been sorted out, I have to prep the 8-conductor cable at the adapter end. The cable I chose will be long enough to provide the final working cable assembly length needed, and the extra sections of wire needed to connect the three sockets following the B9G, which is the first socket in the sequence.

I had a choice in cable of either a cloth loomed one, or a black vinyl one similar to the Stark original. I chose a chocolate, brown, cloth, loomed cable only because I though it would be a more interesting match to all the cloth loomed connectors found with the 19-Set and 52-Set wartime accessories. The interesting challenge with a cloth loom, however, is the tendency of the loom to slowly unravel and fray back over time. As you can see in the attached photo, the length of cable I have had quietly sitting, awaiting its turn in the project for the last few months, is already coming apart, I could simply lacquer it, but I thought it would be much more interesting to go 'old school' and bind the end.

So at this point, the steps will be to measure the amount of free wire I will need for the 8 conductors to have them all link up with the terminals on the B9G socket and trim the loom back that distance accordingly. Then bind the end of the loom. I can them measure the amount of extra wire I need from the opposite end of the cable to provide the necessary bits to tie in the remaining three sockets and trim the cable.

I think the binding at the adapter end of the cable, once varnished, will also provide a useful anti-strain for the connections on the B9G socket, should the cable get an unnecessary tug down the road.

Then the soldering begins.

David