Began work on the power supply, it was on hold today till the Packers got done whooping on Duh Bears. Go Pack, Go!
Below you can see the setup for reforming the NOS capacitors I got from Bob G, he had a drawer full so I was able to select the best suited ones. It consists of the power tranformers, rectifiers, a current meter between the cap and rectifier and a VTVM at the cap. This way I can measure the current the cap is drawing as it reforms, and the potential at the cap to make sure I do not exceed rated voltage. I got some nice tall unused cans from Bob: one with 80uf @ 475VDC and 160uf @ 250VDC sections, the other with 80/30/4uf @ 475VDC and 500uf @ 35VDC sections. There are 2 others that were used pulls, if I need those I will likely restuff them with new ones I have laying around. These unused caps are forming up very nicely, neither one pulled more than 1ma during the forming process and stayed cool as a cucumber. Real test is if I am able to apply full rated voltage right away tomorrow morning, if they hold that I will call them good to use.
The power supply is being built pretty much the same as any other RCA one with a pair of 5U4G's, 80uf cap input filter, choke, then another 80uf cap (inductive pi filter). That's where 385VDC B+ will come from. Then there will be whatever resistor value is required to get a 285 volt rail, followed by another filter section. If I need another lower voltage rail, it will just be another resistor and cap. Tomorrow after work, I will likely build up the harness to go between the supply and main chassis. It's very tempting at that point to power up the tuner and IF sections of the proto chassis, just to see if an RF input signal will pass to the detector. If I do try and it does go through, I will then move on to the other circuits and see what they do. I know most people don't like the 'brute force' method, but it's the fastest way to figure out the relative health of circuits. With tubes you're not as likely to blow something as with transistors, so I don't anticipate any fireworks. Hopefully I can get a staircase to show up at the detector, it would be a very good first sign.