That Italian guy's converter box is pretty neat though.

What Tom said makes sense, link the tuner shaft to the tuner of a little fm radio. You could use an o-ring, or similar rubber belt, maybe. If you get it tensioned, turning the tuner will turn the fm tuner also, but it can slip too, providing for the difference between the two tuners. Better yet, get an fm radio with a digital tuner, and rig it to tune with a rotary encoder switch, and belt THAT to the tuner shaft.

If I can't use the Pye's gang capacitor to directly tune the FM radio I would likely find a way to mount the one from the portable to one end of the gang's drive shaft and run wires to the board under the chassis. As far as I know they all rotate a half turn so I wouldn't have to concern myself with pulley/gear ratios.

By the way I got the dial glass cleaned up. It was pretty filthy on the back too so after a quick test to make sure a light wipe with glass cleaner wouldn't damage the printing I just went to town on it and now it looks great.

Any update on this project?

Nope, the now former owner balked at the cost to restore it and left it here. I have no idea what I'll end up doing with it.

Isn'"t that always the case! This is why I don't usually like doing work on vintage electronics for other people. I recently restored an old early fifties Goodmans hifi speaker from England, and it made me think about your radio. The last time I even touched a British radio was over 20 years ago, and that was a repair I did for a family friend. I've been collecting vintage radios here in Alberta since the early 1990s, and have never come across anything from the UK except some rather large transistor radios from the 1960s.

No kidding, I wasn't surprised. I had papers drawn up with the parts, supplies and cost breakdown and had a Mouser shopping cart full of every part I needed. He was expecting everything to cost about 50 bucks.

Well, this radio is of a British design but made in Canada; same dif I guess. I'm guessing only final assembly was done at the Ajax plant; I noticed that some components were stamped "Made in Britain" or something like that. I have a tuner board I could probably modify to work with it, that is if the right person shows interest.

Now I'm wondering how you attempted that test with your scope. I finally succeeded with it yesterday by touching the cap leads directly to the BNC port. Hooking it up to a probe would not work. However, my scope goes down to 5 millivolts per division so who knows if it will work with yours.

I mean, I guess I could've been picking up interference. My scope goes down to 10mV. I'll have to try it straight on the port like you say.

Oh, and don't touch anything metal while you're at it, it'll throw the reading way off. Just a thumb and forefinger holding the cap body and that's it.

I would have used a BNC connector, alligator clips and a short piece of shielded wire as was used in the video but what I did was all I could do in a pinch.

With a probe you'll get the same amplitude with either polarity.

It finally occurred to me yesterday that the circuit in this video is far more complex than it needs to be. A double-pole, double-throw momentary rocker switch and the ultimate computer (Star Trek reference unintentional) - you know, the one above our shoulders - is all that is needed.

On a side note, I'm wondering how the heck I can make a scan of a dial scale that's nothing more than white lettering on glass. I would have to take it to a print shop because it's too big for a flatbed scanner and it has to sit perfectly flat. I'm wondering if even they would know how to make a scan of such a thing.

Well if it's legit too wide for a regular scanner, a print shop might be able to help. In all honesty, whatever scan you get would not be perfect enough to just reprint. You'll need to photoshop whatever result you get. If the glass is clear, and the letters are light colored, probably put a sheet of black paper behind the glass when you scan it, to give the letters some definition on the scan, bc, you know, the top of the scanner is invariably white.

The real question is, how do you plan to print the new dial onto the glass?

I've heard of printing on clear acetate film and sticking that to the glass, and I don't recall saying what you quoted.

Eh, probably just the typical copy/paste fail.