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Larkspur R210 Army H/F Communications Receiver

R210 external

General Notes

The Larkspur range of military radio equipment was the mainstay of the British army from about 1956 to the early 1970s, and was also used by the Australian army. Most of the range was used in vehicles from tanks to landrovers and sets were available to cover both VHF and HF bands. These sets were still valve based but a great improvement on WWII equipment in that it was easier to service and much better sealed against the elements, especially for tropical use. A standardised set of power supplies, junction boxes and interconnection equpiment was used. Louis Meulstee has a good website with a lot of information on the Larkspur range.

Coverage is 2 - 16 mhz in 7 bands, with a film strip dial giving marks 3 mm apart at 5khz spacing. This receiver was very stable and a built in oscillator (markers every 10 and 100 khz) allowed frequencies to be set to within 2 khz, thus overcoming the netting required of earlier sets to ensure all users were on the same frequency. The receivers could either be powered from 24v using the built in vibrator supply, or externally with 6.3v, 30v and 175v supplied directly. There is an excellent description of the R210 in an article by J A Knight of the builders of the set (A T & E (Bridgenorth) Ltd) on Colin MacKinnon's web site.

R210 internal

Current Condition

This particular set had been substantially modified by previous owners, although the reason for this was not obvious. The vibrator power supply had been removed and an attempt made to build some RF circuitry in its place. The latter was not connected to anything. After some investigation, the set appeared only to require externally supplied 6.3 and 175 volts to operate. As part of the changes, the fuse had been removed and replaced with a headphone socket and the rod antenna socket removed. The gain control had also been replaced. Apart from the modifications, a certain amount of the original paint has been chipped off, mainly around the front panel.

To have restored the set to original specification would have been a near impossible task, so a couple of wiring errors were fixed and the set got going as is. It is an acceptable example of quite a rare set in Australia.

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Page maintained by Simon Buxton VK2UA . Created: 10/02/02 Updated: 24/11/2009