Certainly you can wash out electronics with distilled water without harm... and it works better at air than removing dust and other debris. If you don't let it dry, or if you use water with minerals, that's when you get issues. Would I hose out my scope? No. Would I rinse a particularly nasty PCB given the right facilities and a supply of DI water/IPA? Sure.
Some interesting developments. I've re-coated the flyback with a total of three coats of dope and bake-cured it. Reinstalled it with new wires.
Powered up the set to verify all was well; after a few minutes, the image goes all jittery, dims, I hear a *plink* and I lose HV entirely. No 15KHz whine from the HV area either. Strange.
Pull the output tube, re-verified my wiring, and start measuring. Both 200V and 300V B+ are fine. Horizontal drive waveform on the HOT is fine, so no issues with the oscillator.
Odd.
Plug the tube back in, start set again. Hear the HV come up, get a picture. After about 30 seconds, picture jitters, blooms and fades, and the HV shuts down again with another *plink* noise.
One thing I take away from this is my HV woes may not have been flyback related, but rather wonkiness on the part of the horizontal drive... but I sure feel a lot better knowing the fly is likely good to go for much longer now that it's rid of the wax and coated with a better material.
Now I'll need to study the output stage in detail and figure out what's going funny. Likely going to be tricky as my scope and probes are only rated for 600V input so I can't go probing willy-nilly.
Anyone have any knee-jerk reactions as to the cause? You might save me a few hours.
