Back in the day ...... what now seems prehistoric times I never paid much attention to the Bruin wagons we had at the Brigade Signal Squadron I was at in the late 70's.

Thing is I'm a bit of a '430 series nut and now looking for any photo's anyone may have of the Radio Relay, Message Centre and Auto Exchange vehicles (ie FV439) from the ancient Bruin system. I know the Message Centre as a seperate entity disappeared under Ptarmigan but I'm curious to know if the Radio Delay vehicles changed much ?

I'm not quite old enough to help directly, but the TA regt I joined at 17 1/2 had Bruin (wheeled). Originally C70 Radio Delay, but later replaced with Triffid. The Triffid gets were all 3 bankers and that was it in the back of the box. Nowt else except a kettle, TV, and porn stash. When I joined up regular, I looked in the back of a Triffid (Ptar) det, and it had a 'kin huge TACE, a couple of 481 SHF sets and SEOW.

I can only think that tracked Triffid dets would have been the same (maybe 2x banks), and the mini-TACE, RRIE I think it was called. Never worked on Armour though.

The Message Centre as a node did continue under Ptar, the SAS/MC. Basically a bunch of Teleprinters and an LDA Mux. There was also the Ptarmigan Packet Switch thing, which did absolutely fuck all, because it was way ahead of its time and nobody had any use for it.

Throughout all of this, I was a Clansman wallah, so my recollections may be a bit off, as I was never trained on any of it, just got dicked to work on it every now and again.

Guru's probably your man on this kit.

How I loved my Tev. My 20 line exchange in the front with a rack of 200's and the back half full of teleprinters and brew bitches.

Dunno about tracked Bruin dets, as my Bruin time was at 21. We had a few 6 Channels, an Auto 64, an Auto 40, Tech Con ans Message Centre (Massage Parlour) alongside a handful of C70 dets. I was in 2 Sqn (Harrier Support). 1 (REMF) Sqn had C50s and 40/160 dets. 7 and 22 had TARIF dets too.

One correction, Ptarmigan did retain Message Centres. Not only was there SAS/MC for Bde level access, there were also Message Centre (Large), which were full box B Staff vehicles chockers with Trend printers (and how wank were they ?)

Weren't they going to mix teh Trend with the Cossor at one point?

Re Relays. IIRC wasn't the Ptarmigan Boxes just Bruin Relay boxes? That is why they had that little door at the rear to allow your tv aerial out. Wasn't Triffid used in Bruin too?

And (CMIW) wasn't Bruin one of the first attempt at COTS?

My bad. I meant Cossor. They really were shite. They got binned from MCL and replaced with Trend which weren't that bad.

Triffid was used in Bruin. They went away to get modded and got fitted with TACE SEOW etc. The flap at the back was for a field telling bone.

Originally Posted by the_guru

Triffid was used in Bruin. They went away to get modded and got fitted with TACE SEOW etc. The flap at the back was for a field telling bone.

Are you sure? The size of it you could pass the whole phone through!!! I was told it was to pass the RF cables thorugh, in the days before TACE.

Used to see lots of Triffid with bruin plates on, others had 'modded for ptarmigan' or similar plates attached. Not sure what the difference was.

Originally Posted by the_guru

My bad. I meant Cossor. They really were shite. They got binned from MCL and replaced with Trend which weren't that bad.

Triffid was used in Bruin. They went away to get modded and got fitted with TACE SEOW etc. The flap at the back was for a field telling bone.

Whoever signed off the Cossor printer as fit for service should have been taken out and had an earthspike rammed in orifices, repeatedly. Biggest load of tosh I ever had the misfortune to use.

At 1 Div rear we had an MCVF with an Ericson 25-line cordless, T50s, sometimes souped to T75, with inter-city shots to main and step-up. I started with the 10KVA gennies and once had a 27 1/2 KVA before I realized that being a handbag was so much easier, and drier. Ah.... real comms, hard work, long exercises, sh1t conditions, but what a great bunch of guys, some of us whom keep in touch 30 years down the line. I'll have to look in my B & W photo album.

Originally Posted by JT0475

Whoever signed off the Cossor printer as fit for service should have been taken out and had an earthspike rammed in orifices, repeatedly. Biggest load of tosh I ever had the misfortune to use.

I preferred Cossor to Trend though.