Quote:
Originally Posted by mjennens
Thanks Jeff,
Can you give me any info on testing the tubes? I remember going to a local "Western Auto" store with my dad to test the tubes from our TV when I was a kid, but that was long ago... Anyway.....
I have the speaker that came with the radio. It's quite the speaker, and it does appear to be a field coil speaker. I've also been told so on another posting. It all came in the cabinet, but the cabinet was in very bad shape. If I can get this thing working, I'd like to build a new cabinet for it. I'd also like to figure out how to wire an RCA jack to work with the jack for the TV. Any ideas on that?
Not a lot of FM stations in Bismarck, probably about 12, some stronger than others. I'm a Cleveland (Eastlake) native myself. Go Browns!!!
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Hmmm. I don't know what to tell you as far as tube testing goes, as the drugstore tube tester disappeared decades ago; with everything being solid state these days, the need for tube testers is nowhere near as pressing as it once was, although there are a few circuits that still rely on tubes (mainly high-power amateur radio and broadcast power amplifiers). I've been experimenting with electronics for 40+ years and am an amateur radio operator, but it has literally been years since I saw a tube tester. The last one I remember is an old (1950s or perhaps earlier vintage) Eico 625-04 tester my dad had. This tester probably dates before the '50s as it had, IIRC, a type 80 rectifier tube in its power supply.
I looked up Bismarck's FM stations on RadioStationWorld (
www.radiostationworld.com) and found only about twelve FM stations, as you stated. Since the city is in North Dakota, though, I would imagine you can get stations from Montana and even Canada on a good day. Here where I live in northeast Ohio, a mile or so from the south shore of Lake Erie, I can hear all Cleveland stations, Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario stations, as well as several from Leamington and Chatham, Ontario; in fact, earlier this morning I was listening on my Zenith MJ1035 to CIDR-FM 93.9 "The River" in Windsor, Ontario, which also serves the Detroit area. This station was known as CKLW-FM until perhaps a year or so ago.
I lived in suburban Cleveland for 43 years before moving to Fairport Harbor in November 1999. The details of why I moved are off-topic for this thread, but I will say that the main reason I moved here is that I always wanted to live in a small town (our population here is 3,220 as of 2006) after having grown up in the suburbs (I also lived in an inner-ring Cleveland suburb called Cleveland Heights from 1972 until 1975). After finding out I had to move in late 1999, again skipping the details, I moved to my current location in November of that year, and have been here ever since.
The radio reception here on AM and FM is excellent, but the television reception leaves an awful lot to be desired. I can get decent reception with an antenna on only four UHF stations (the ABC, CBS and FOX stations in Cleveland, all VHF, are fair to poor at best with rabbit ears), and the Cleveland NBC affiliate on channel 3 doesn't reach here at all; for these reasons, most folks here either have Time-Warner cable service or DirecTV or Dish Network satellite. I guess it must be the terrain features of this area or something between here and Parma, Ohio (a southwestern suburb of Cleveland), where all of the Cleveland TV transmitters, analog and digital (seven analog channels, 3-5-8-19-25-43-61) are located, that makes TV reception on antennas so bad. Another crazy thing that happened in Cleveland regarding the city's CBS television affiliate was when that affiliation was moved from its longtime home on channel 8 (42 years) to a UHF station (channel 19), the latter channel being where Cleveland's CBS has been since the early '90s. (The station didn't even have a local newscast until it had been with CBS about five years.) The details of that switch are a story in themselves (and off-topic, again, for this thread), so I won't go into them here. However, I am wondering how the TV stations in North Dakota are doing as far as the digital transition next year is concerned. Your state is wide open, probably with a lot of land separating homes from one another, so analog TV reception there could be a problem. I don't know how digital will work out there, unless you have cable or satellite service available. My best guess is you do, as there probably aren't that many local TV stations in the Bismarck area.
Nice to meet someone originally from northeast Ohio on AK. There are many folks here who live in the area, such as dr*audio, fsjonsey, myself, et al. so this area is well represented here.