[Charlie]

So far, I've made good progress with the Diamond D. Things have improved dramatically, but still have a couple of buggers to look for.

One of the initial problems in the set was no vertical deflection... it just had the typical white line going across the screen. The vertical opens up now, but, not near enough. The raster is crunched up only covering maybe half the screen. Tried adjusting the height controls, which had an affect, but not enough affect to correct the problem. In the past, someone had changed about 4 or 5 capacitors on the verticle/horizontal board, so I left them in place. Not changing them was probably a dumb-ass thing to do, so I will start there. I'll also go back and double check my previous work, as it's always possible i could have made a mistake installing a cap with the wrong value.

Also, I seem to have a signal strength issue. The signal I am now getting is far better than before I started, but, I still felt it was just a little bit weak. If I let the set run for a while... say 30-45 minutes, all of a sudden the signal comes in 100% improving both sight and sound. It stays that was a few seconds, then goes back to the weaker state. It continues to do this but each stronger cycle last a little longer than the previous one. Tried tapping around on components and jiggling tubes back and forth, but didn't find anything that way. While the chassis was out, I tightened up the screws on the boards pretty good as Don pointed out they are ground connections. Perhaps I will also try dabbing a little solder on them as well. The problem obviously gets better as runs, so, something in there is changing with temperature. I did not change the 1000 ohm resistor in the tuner that was mentioned earlier since the resistance measurements at the tuner's tube sockets were within spec. I might go back and change that resistor anyway just for the hell of it.

That's about it. Once I get those two bugs worked out, this set should play very well. Even now as it is, it makes a really good picture (although crunched up). Has good brightness and contrast.