[Charlie]

I couldn't stand it anymore, so, last night I decided to drive home (about an hour drive) and get some gear to bring back to the cabin so I could play with this set.

This morning, I started out with the CRT which tested fine. After that, I looked around a little closer to see if any parts looked near death. Everything looked okay, so I pulled the HO tube and decided to do a very slow soft start. After a few hours of inching the juice up, everything seemed okay. The lytic cans were a little warm, but not so much to cause concern. The B+ voltages were pretty close to spec. Looking promising at this point.

TV is extremely hard to pick up in these woods, so, I connected a dvd player and was able to get some audio. It was somewhat weak, so I went thru checking and replacing tubes along the path. No changes. I have all the tubes except one... the tuner's RF amp. The tube chart showed it as a weird number like X-155. When I jerked the tube out that was in there, it was labeled 6BS8. I'm sure i'll find that later.

After letting it run for a while like this, I decided to plug in the HO tube and see if I got any kind of light on the screen. I did get light, but only a white line going across. Tried changing both the verticle tubes, but no change. Guess I'll know where to start when I pull the chassis out for changing caps.

At least I have something to work with here... a signal and light on the screen is promising. I'm sure once I get all those black beauties out, things will start to shape up. I'll probably pull the chassis after dinner.

Stay tuned.