[Jeffhs]

I finally found a battery box for my Zenith Royal 1000. I received an email today from a fellow near Baltimore, John Kendall, who deals in vintage/antique radios and the parts to repair them (I am on his mailing list, as I have purchased items from him before). I looked at the message, which is a link to his website, and found, after doing a search on "Transoceanic box", the very battery case I have been looking for since shortly after receiving my Royal 1000. I immediately placed an order for it and its matching top cover. The usual price for both is $67, but I received a coupon discount of $16.75, bringing the total to $56.94. The battery case described on John's website includes everything (case top and bottom and cable with connector) except the batteries themselves, so as soon as it arrives here (and when I get the batteries, of course) I'll be able to use my Royal 1000 as it was actually intended to be used--as a portable as well as with its own 12-volt wall-wart.

BTW, speaking of that 12-V wall-wart transformer, I noticed something rather strange (to my way of thinking) about the way the AC adapter jack in the solid-state Royal 1000-1 T/O, and maybe the 3000 as well, is wired. There are three wires going to the jack, rather than two. I was wondering if that third lead is a dial light tap. Someone, in response to a message I left there regarding the dial lights in my set, in a Google newsgroup dedicated to the T/O series mentioned that the DC adapter jack in these radios is wired in such a way that the dial lights absolutely will not work with the radio operating on AC power with a wall-wart; the lights only operate when the receiver is operating on battery power. Has anyone else heard of this, and if so, why on earth would the dial lights be wired to operate only on battery power, not on AC? I would think the thing would have been configured the other way around, to conserve that ninth D cell used solely for the dial lights for when it was really needed, namely when the radio was being used in areas of little or no light; after all, when these receivers are being used on AC power, they are almost always in well-illuminated areas, so the dial lights would not be necessary, say if the radio was being used at home.

I knew I'd find one of these boxes eventually if I looked in the right place. I considered bidding on a basket-case T-O 3000, with battery box, I saw on ebay a week or so ago, but changed my mind when I saw the filthy condition of the thing; the battery box was filthy--the seller referred to it and the radio as "ugly"--as well. My TO looks fairly good now, with most of the dust, etc. cleaned off the case, front panel and the dial drum (and sounds fantastic as well, as do all Zeniths); I didn't want to put a filthy-looking battery case inside after all that.

I'm still trying to figure out how to clean the inside of the dial window on the front panel; there doesn't seem to be nearly enough room to poke a dust rag around to the back of the window without distorting the dial drum (believe me, I've tried everything I can think of, including a dust rag, paper towels, etc.), and I certainly don't want to use anything moist in there (a rag moistened with window cleaner, etc.), for fear of causing a short. I don't want to have to resort to taking the chassis apart, but the way the T-O 1000/3000 series is built it looks like I may not have much of a choice.

One thing I will admit though--these battery cases are very rare and difficult to find (as has been pointed out to me on several occasions), and even tougher to find in decent shape (many such cases are junk due to leakage from old batteries, so they are missing from many if not most Royal 1000/3000 sets in use today). Phil Nelson of Phil's Old Radios once told me, in a message on a Google newsgroup, that he has owned perhaps a half dozen solid-state Trans-Oceanics; only two of them had battery cases. I guess a lot of the SS T/Os eventually wound up with ruined battery boxes from, as I mentioned, old, leaking batteries (some people do have a habit of leaving batteries in anything indefinitely--I have seen antique/vintage 3-way portable and battery-operated tube radios on ebay that still had the original A and B batteries in them; dead, of course, as the seller is usually careful to point out).