[Milsurplus] "Northern 252"

[Hubert Miller]

I am presently with moving a lot of 'stuff' from rental storage to my brother's property and working on my van, so I cannot at present, but later, 
maybe even August, I'll get some more photos. This is interesting, what Bob asked about receive crystals, and as I recall, I only saw one set of 
5 sockets. There is no 'spotting' switch, of course. The dial, I thought was likely a ham modification, but - it is professionally installed and lettered;
and the radio appears unused; so I am convinced it is original. As for the meter being an expense, I looked also at 2 Forest Service type radios 
from 1938 design, and both are portable and have a meter, so a meter was apparently not that much of an expense. The receiver tuning range
1150 - 3400 kHz seems odd, but I have seen it before in one instance: a Bremerton, Washington built boat radio by P.A.R.   When I saw the bottom-
of-the-line P.A.R. radio, I thought this was a cheap way to add a semi-feature, that is, coverage of ( some ) of the broadcast band.  I was a little 
surprised to see this in a more expensive radio, but I recognized it was not a hammy mod. 

Now as for the nameplate. First let's be clear, Northern Electric of the East Coast is an entirely different animal. The Northern set whose photo I 
posted is labeled "Northern Electric", Seattle, and the tag, oddly enough, includes the Seattle firm's phone number. Odd. 
Now for something really interesting - at least for some of us. 
One of the Forest Service type radios I looked at today has a painted marking outside, "SP5". I know that the Forest Service users had an "SP" radio
and I don't know how mine fits into any nomenclature series.  The outside is also marked "NPS" which I assume is "National Park Service".  This is
a late 1930s portable battery set, around 3 MHz, with a regenerative receiver and crystal controlled AM-CW transmitter. The nameplate inside, as
well as I can remember right now,  is something like:
Type DC6A3 Serial 2
Manufactured by Northern Electric 
for Northern Radio

So, was "Northern Electric" ( Seattle ) assumed into "Northern Radio" ( Seattle ) ?  And I assume, somewhere during WW2, because I have seen a 
"Northern Radio" ( Seattle ) product from 1946.  
The "Northern type E receiver" shown in the PSARA auction catalog was actually a N605E.  "E" denotes 115/1/60.  I noted that the auction 
example had the original meter replaced with an ill-fitting replacement, which inclined me to not even bid, altho I "sort of" collect "Northern
Radio" ( Seattle ).  After the N605E was gaveled, I went over to the winning bidder at $60 and told him that I had paid around $400 for mine
( the best example I have seen ) and that Universal Radio had on their "sold pages" one they'd sold for something like $550 before plentiful 
shipping charges, and he told me that one had recently sold in Spokane WA for $250. So he did alright. I think any qualified radio hobbyist
would have the smarts to find a better fitting replacement meter for his. 

There were also an RAL-8, an RME 69, an SX-28 sold, and some other things more of interest to other people. I thought the prices were 
quite reasonable, anyway compared to Ebay certainly. 
-Hue 

On 7/20/2017 1:17 PM, Hubert Miller wrote:
> this radio, with the National-type dial, would not stand up to marine 
> service

Hue, I'd be very interested in seeing more detailed pics, in and out.   
Could it be that the National dial was added later and that would be verified by the presence of receive crystal sockets inside.  Or could it (or a less elaborate tuning dial) have originally been provided to tune just the BC band as was commonly done?  It would be very interesting to know of the tunable receiver could be used with the transmitter 
operating from one of the crystal positions.   I've modded sets to do 
this as part of a conversion but it's not as easy as I thought.  While a tunable receiver is just what we want as hams, it would have been a detriment to any commercial service where crystal controlled transmit and receive helped to provide reliable communication without a trained radio operator.

The corded mic is standard marine practice and I've seen others that used the Mallory Vibra-Pack, but the meter is an odd thing to include - certainly not often seen and an expensive item back when it was built, 
whenever that was.     The all-glass miniature tube was developed in 
1938 but widespread production is definitely post-WWII.    A single 6AQ5 
is pretty puny even for the low-end marine sets and while there were numerous field portables made that ran 5-10 watts of power, this doesn't look like anyone's notion of "portable"

A fellow named John Rose has a website for broadcast radios made by Northern Electric Co. of Canada.  I've always wanted to understand the origin of this company and it's relationship to the Northern Radio Co. 
of Seattle.

Nice to hear that you got it - it's an unusual set!

73, Bob W9RAN