Wartime Civilian Receiver - Part 1: Introduction

During the latter half of World War 2, the British government determined that there were a million or more UK households without a working radio.  The manufacturers had stopped producing consumer sets in order to concentrate on war work, so no more new sets were available. Faulty sets often didn't get repaired, as many radio technicians and engineers had been called up for military service.

A family gather around their wireless set during WWII (photo: BBC)

Recognising that the wireless was an important source of information and propaganda, the government created a scheme to produce domestic sets cheaply and in bulk, but using the minimum of materials.  The task of designing this radio was assigned to Dr G.D. Reynolds of Murphy Radio Ltd. The final design was then given to 42 different manufacturers, who were contracted to produce identical looking sets. Whilst this seems strange today, the government were concerned that customers might prefer one manufacturer over another, presumably leading to supply difficulties, and making them anonymous avoided this. Manufacturers were therefore not allowed to put their name or any identifying marks on the finished set, although they were allowed to make small changes to the design in order to use stocks of components that they had. Most of these differences appear to have been things like loudspeakers and transformers, but there were a few minor circuit changes as well.  Each manufacturer was allocated a code (A1 to A42) from which a technician could determine who the the manufacturer was when carrying out warranty repairs.

Wartime Civilian Receiver - AC Version

The cabinets were very basic, made from soft pine wood, with two vertical  pieces of hardwood on the front for decoration.  The tuning was also extremely basic with no reduction drive or glass scale, and instead of the exotic-sounding names found on pre-war sets, the WCR tuning dial has only 'HOME' or 'FORCES' stations. The set was medium wave only , as the long wave broadcast service was closed down during the conflict to prevent German aircraft from using it for navigation. A few sets were produced as MW/LW after the war (using a design produced, I believe, by Bush Radio) and these are now quite rare. Many more were converted by radio shops or by the owners themselves.

The WCR was produced in battery only and AC mains only versions, and went into production in June 1944. It was priced at £12 3s 6d and 175,000 AC versions were sold in the first year.

Electronically the set is a four valve 'short' superhet, but with the traditional detector valve replaced by a 'Westector ' metal oxide rectifier.

Wartime Civilian Receiver - Battery Version

Although some cost savings were obviously made, having restored my AC set I'm not convinced that the WCR was actually as cheap to build as the  'utility' design implied. The mains transformer for one seems to be rather larger than it needs to be, and could have been avoided altogether if a transformerless AC/DC design had been adopted, as was very common in post-war sets. There would have been other advantages in doing this as DC mains was still widely used in the UK during the forties.

Given its simplicity, the WCR seems to work surprisingly well. Mine is working nicely on the workbench as I write, but needs a bit more 'soak' testing before I'll be happy to call it completed. I'll then be taking lots of photos before putting it back together.

Details of the restoration will appear on here soon, so come back if you are interested.

Keep listening!