safely starting a rca rutland
 

Picking up a rca rutland in a few hours, for the price i figure what the hell.

I have a few outlet's here that are hooked up to a dimmer switch. Would that be a safe way to start it?

More specifically, could someone suggest caps that should be replaced prior to firing it up?

Much appreciated.

That's basically what I do. I have a box I built, and I use a dimmer as a rheostat. It's not as heavy duty as a proper variac, but it will work :)

cool, thanks. I'll let u know how i make out.

I'm surprised! I would not think that would work well (or at all) on a set that has a power transformer (inductive load).

jr

Is this a tube set? I wouldn't use a dimmer on a Solid State set, low voltage could damage a SS set.

it's a 1949, all tubes

I would not use a dimmer switch on an older all tube set. You may fry the power transformer. Dimmer switches don't work like a variac at all.

You can wire up a 100 to 250 watt light bulb in series with the ac to the set to avoid putting full power to it when you first turn it on.
If you immediately get a full bright light from the bulb, shut the set off and start troubleshooting and looking for bad power supply capacitors.

Best Luck.

Might not be the perfectly right way to do it, but I've been powering up televisions that way ever since I've been working on them, which is about 15 years. I've never had any bad experiences.

I wouldn't use a dimmer either. It They can produce weird waveforms as most chop the AC waveform to limit the duty cycle. They may cause noise in other things such as stereo equipment (buzz). If they fail they usually short to full voltage which may give a vintage TV quite a bad day.
I use lightbulbs and prefer variacs.

Interesting! the one that I tried years ago would not "dim" at all when driving an inductive load... I think that it used a SCR, perhaps dimmers with Triacs behave differently. :scratch2:

jr

If a variac is out of the question then I would go with the Dim Bulb method, at least that way you have some idea of how much current is being pulled by the set.
You can start low with a 50 watt bulb and work your way up, a 200 watt bulb should power a set well enough to at least start up, if it's going to at all.

You have to privide enough voltage for the 5U4 to begin conducting, otherwise it's pertty meaningless.

I've used a dimmer switch on a large transformer type tube radio before successfully. Not the best method,but it does work in a pinch.