I think that some of the claims regarding this Canadian development of portable radios were written by family members 🙂. Donald Hings did develop portable sets for the mining industry but the claims of the military sets are quite erroneous. The WS58 was never deployed to regular active service. Only 600 were used by the British Home Guard and a few sets were sent to the northern European theatre for battle trials. The balance were sold off surplus after the war or given to European countries. The WS58 has no scrambling or battlefield noise suppression. The modular antenna system is no different to other sets, ie rod, telescopic or wire. The closest Hings came to a "walkie talkie" was the Wireless Set 27 (Can).

Bruce M0SOE

On 20/04/2026 16:00, Ray Fantini via Milsurplus wrote:

Along the line of that Weavix has a web page that gives a timeline and development of manpacks, handhelds and tactical FM, the only thing is they tend to say that Canada deserves all the credit?

There web site is:

https://weavix.com/blogs/walkie-talkie-history/#walkie-talkie-historical-timeline-1930s-present

They are a Wi-Fi/LTE subscription-based (Opex) vendor but thought this was a good web site anyway.

Ray F/KA3EKH