Opinions on Radiation, er.. Air King TV
 

I found an Air King on line that I'm considering buying - it's a 16C2 compact mahogany console. I had the schematic in my pile and took a look at it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/186808542@N07/


Very simple design but does have at least a power transformer.

It also features a 16RP4 CRT.

I'm looking to do a full resto on a consolette about this size. Are these any good? Is the 16RP4 a good tube? I'm looking for a solid performer and don't have a lot of experience with early 50s TVs. Any insight appreciated.

John

Radiation King <- lol

I've never owned one of those, but the schematic looks decent...It is no Zenith, but muntz and others were able to get decent picture on much simpler sets.

The advantage of simpler sets is that they are less work to fix.

Hopefully the CRT is all glass. The metal cone tubes were prone to becoming gassy. Gassy tubes always have strong emission and weird cutoff... until the heater eventually burns open.

16RP4 is a first generation, non-aluminzed rectangular CRT with thick glass and flat sides. Not as quite as nice an image as an aluminized 16KP4 but certainly capable of producing a good image.

A nod to the geniuses who wrote the early years of the Simpsons. In that episode, homer revisited his childhood home where the Radiation King TV kept him company for hours. His image is still burned on the floor and wall...

https://capricorncity.com/wp-content...Inadequacy.jpg

https://deadhomersociety.files.wordp...king.png?w=655

John

Yeah, this looks like it uses the contrast control for an AGC control, or am I reading that wrong?

John

My kid brother keeps saying I should make a Radiation King badge for one of my vintage TVs :D

Do you have a picture of this set?

Radiation King?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ScUjHWUL34

.

https://i.imgur.com/U24fOKY.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/U24fOKY.jpg


John

I wonder how many folks remember (or never knew) there was a radiation "scare" about televisions? For those that would insist upon watching television with the tip of their nose in contact with the CRT, I guess there was some.

Anyway, certain changes were made to televisions to eliminate the problem.

I still have in my collection a HV rectifier tube that was shipped in new GE color table model televisions and retrofitted to earlier produced units that had a leaded rubber coating molded around the glass envelope. The damned tube feels like it weighs half a pound.

Instructions that came with the tube new warned of handling the tube without gloves.

Apparently, the Simpsons writer who wrote that episode must have been aware of that issue or perhaps discovered it researching early televisions for his script.



John

It was the damper in early color sets that gave off most of the x-rays (relatively week, but still---x-rays) Fortunately, in most set designs, the radiation emitted went down through the bottom of the cabinet. You'd need to be a contortionist to get any significant exposure.:)

IIRC, the HV regulator was also the culprit... just found a rubber/
lead covered 6BK4 in my tube stash.

jr

I'm going to repeat an urban legend here (which means it may or may not be true).

I heard the x-ray problem was due to GE not wanting to pay RCA royalties for using the 6BK4 and came out with their own shunt regulator which generated the x-rays. The story goes that a woman had a cat that liked to sleep under the warm console TV when it was on. The cat started losing hair and the source of the problem was then discovered. I do know that GE replaced a lot of their first generation shunt regulator tubes as a part of a recall.

Oops, mixed up a couple of tubes, my 6BK4 is very heavy leaded glass, the rubberized lead tube is a 3DR3 rectifer.

jr

Yep, that's the one. I have at least one and maybe a couple of more. I've got a thousand tubes I haven't catalogued in my basement.

Off topic, but I discovered I've got a small RCA scope and a Kingston "Absorption Analyzer" whatever that is. Looks like a scope (has a CRT) but isn't.

John

Knowing GE it probably was a matter of them not wanting to add $0.10 worth of shielding metal for the shunt reg/HV rect.

Radiation King was a fictional brand, but someone on VK had the same idea and made this some time back...I thought it was interesting and downloaded it, today I stumbled on it, thus this post.

This really happened to my parents cat, but in this case (mid 60s Sylvania set) the cat slept on the top at the left side, which was the warmest spot, right above the horizontal and hv section. The 6BK4 was replaced with a leaded version, Cindy recovered and lived to a fairly old age (14 or 15 years).

jr

LOL, LOVE IT!!

If I end up buying that Air King I'm going to have to cast a new name plate.

John

The problem came about due to faulty manufacturing in which the tube elements were not properly aligned. If all the elements were straight and concentric, the X-rays generated by the anode were blocked by the lower tube elements, but if mis-aligned, the tilted elements would allow some X-rays to escape around the edges.