[Jeffhs]

I agree with VK members Zenithfan1 and Einar72 -- recap the set before going any further. As a minimum, I'd replace the power supply filter capacitors. Your TV was made 63 years ago, and these capacitors are almost certainly defective. At best, they will allow 60-Hz AC hum into the TV's deflection, sync and other circuits; at worst, if these capacitors short, they can burn out the power transformer (by putting a direct short across the output of said transformer) if they don't blow the TV's own line fuse or the house fuse/breaker first.

Good luck, and I hope you get this set working. It may take a while, but when you get it working well, you will have a TV to be proud of. You won't see HD pictures on it (this set was built for the old NTSC television standards, so at best you will see a picture with black bars at either side and/or at the top and bottom, which can be compensated for using the zoom button on your converter's remote), but the picture you will see will be, owing to today's DTV standards, much sharper and clearer than any NTSC picture ever was. I grew up watching NTSC TV; when I got my flat screen about a year and a half ago I was amazed at the difference in picture quality between my RCA CTC185 19" portable color set (which, until then, I had been using for over ten years on cable) and the new flat set. You have probably already noticed this since you have a converter box on your GE portable, and have been watching Indianapolis TV in digital format since Christmas. Your Arvin console has a larger screen, though, so you will have that much more picture to see, even with the letterbox/pillarbox effect common when viewing HDTV on a standard TV.