Starting on another RCA Portable
 

This one's a 17-PD-8096 from 1958, I've had this for at least 15 years, it worked halfway when I got it (first picture), sometime since then
the B+ filter cap went completely open and now
it buzzes and motorboats very badly. <---Video link.

I thought this set was blue and white but it's actually a dark shade of gray, it's hard to tell unless it's in a bright light.
It's a "Deluxe" model but I don't know what's so deluxe about it, it's a series string, hot chassis with Selenium rectifiers. It uses a 17CDP4 CRT which seems to be in good shape, it has an oddball 8.4 volt heater. The Yoke cover is in great shape on this one, they must have changed the formula for the plastic between 1957 and 58.

I've got it apart on the bench, got both cans removed and an order for Caps ready to go at Mouser.

The PC board on these is every bit as difficult as the one in a Predicta, possibly more so since it has a metal shield bolted and soldered over the bottom of it.

Although these RCA Deluxe models are nice looking sets, I've been told in the past that they're at the top for most difficult TV to repair. One long time TV collector/dealer I know just passes on them. Often the yoke is disintegrated too.

The set is considered "Deluxe" because of the cabinet trim, three stage IF and possibly a Cascode tuner. Some models used a penthode tuner. :scratch2:

I guess when you get right down to it the type of power supply doesn't really matter, it's the actual audio/video circuitry that's important, we tend to equate weight with quality, a cold chassis is always nice though. :yes:

I got all the point to point Caps replaced and most of the ones on the PC board, except I'm out of .047's and had to order some.

Here are some more pictures. I bought a large lot of NOS Orange Drops on eBay a couple weeks ago, they are from the 1970's on up so I think they'll be good, I'm trying a few in this set to see how they work, they certainly look better than the yellow ones.

Some of the tube sockets have been mangled, the center row are i.f. and they are supposed to have shields on them, there were none and the sockets themselves have a loose rivet on the edge and a metal tab sticking out of the center, I think someone removed the shield grounding tab at some point but I'll have to look at another set to see just what is wrong. It'll suck if I have to replace four sockets.

As far as repairing them as a hobby the extra work doesn't bother me, but I can imagine the horror the repair guys must have felt when confronted with one of these back in the day, the labor of taking it apart is much more than the typical console, though the CRT does come out pretty easily allowing access to the power supply and hand wired parts.
If they needed trouble shooting on the board it's a whole different story. I wonder if a lot of them got tossed because the repair bill was just too high?

RCA ad from Feb. 1958. These look a bit hefty to carry around.

-Steve D.

Just imagine what an arm stretcher they would be if RCA had used a power transformer...

And imagine carrying around a 1958 21" "portable" that RCA Victor slapped a handle on.

-Steve D.

That's nothing, this tape machine weighed a ton, but was "portable" because it had a handle.
http://home.netcom.com/~aa5/radios/sonora-r2r.jpg

Steve, that's a 14" set, both the 17 and 14 inch sets came with and without transformers, the transformer models are considerably heavier of course.

This is a 21" model, and one I'd love to find. Harry Poster had one on his site for a while but shipping something that large would be expensive and risky, not to mention the space crisis I'm having.

I'm pretty sure these used the thin 21" CRT, similar to the Predicta but not a Short Focus tube.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1455410480

Could be pleasant if it was made by Muntz, and only the handle was added by RCA :P ....I once almost bought a 23" Muntz metal table top...That thing felt lighter than I'd expect the CRT alone to be.

The difference between 393 and 394
 

When it's a Capacitor it's a huge difference!

I finished recapping this on Friday and powered it up, surprisingly it worked right out of the gate, but the vertical height and linearity were a mess.

I could get a halfway decent picture with the height control cranked fully counter clockwise and the linearity adjusted as good as it would get, which wasn't very good at all.

I've spent several hours today replacing out of spec resistors (only one was really far out at 900k instead of 680k), checking controls, re-replacing some NOS Orange drops thinking maybe they were bad, after doing that I could barely get the vertical to lock at all and the linearity was no better at all.

Well it finally dawned on me just a bit ago that I had installed a .39 cap where a .039 was supposed to go, off by a factor of ten! lucky it worked at all.

After putting the right cap in the vertical dialed right in.

I suppose the size of this .39 should have been a clue but the original was about the same size, of course caps have gotten a lot smaller in the last 57 years. The second picture shows the .39 directly above the correct .039 installed in the chassis.

What can I say, it just looks great, congratulations.

This is a fantastic picture, and a really nice TV - I recapped a predicta so I know what sort of pain is involved in this kind of work! Did RCA also solder the board down in multiple places? I wonder what is that touch of bending at the top of the screen, is everything ok in the horizontal circuitry?

Thanks.
I'm not done yet though, the horizontal is rock solid but the vertical still has an issue, it's rather unstable. It'll be fine for a while then the retrace lines get bad and it starts to jump.

Every RCA portable with this or a similar chassis has had difficult vertical issues, must be a really bad design or they all have something common bad in them.

There is one of those integrated Couplates in the Sync circuit I think, similar to what the Predicta has, I wonder if it could be going bad?

Oh and in answer to Maxhifi's question, yes, the board is soldered to the chassis around the edges, not in a way that can easily be removed either, you have to unsolder a metal shield from the bottom of the chassis to get access, it's fairly easy to work on after that.

Actually, I wonder if my vertical issue could be caused by running it without that cover?

Right on. I have a KCS109A/17PT-8071, the non-deluxe version which has a 6CB6 RF amp in the tuner and a "missing" IF stage, tho' the PWB is punched/traced for it. No built-in rabbit ears either. The cabinet is isolated from the chassis with a disc capacitor, and the plug is not polarized.

After a careful re-cap, it looks OK but the CRT is not as good as Eric's set. My main complaint is horizontal "pie-crusting" or intermittent small bends and pulls depending on video levels. The vertical lock is fair, at best. The contrast control on mine behaves like an AGC control. Maybe the copulate Eric mentioned?:scratch2:

Its black with gold trim. An it has a dented-in top, likely from Fonzie-style "love taps" resulting from a lousy PC board.