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:
They are a Wi-Fi/LTE subscription-based (Opex) vendor but
thought this was a good web site anyway.
Ray F/KA3EKH