Nice RCA portable on eBay - Videokarma.org TV - Video

***Eric H*** · #1 02-13-2004, 01:35 AM

No bids with 18 hours to go.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...&category=3638

Rob · #2 02-13-2004, 02:38 AM

Eric,

You are having trouble sleeping deciding if you can find room to make a good home for this set aren't ya?

I sense it.

BTW, how is the CTC7 or 9(?) ? Remember the one we were both after that you got and that is how we met?

***Eric H*** · #3 02-13-2004, 01:21 PM

Hi Rob, I can truly say I don't want this one. It's nice but not my style.

The 7 is sitting in my dining room, still has no color.
I am so overwhelmed with projects I have been considering unloading it.

***Eric H*** · #4 02-13-2004, 01:23 PM

The model number and picture for posterity:

RCA Victor Model # 170T072

Jeffhs · #5 02-21-2004, 11:27 PM

Eric H,

That set looks very familiar. My aunt had an RCA portable TV something like it back in the mid '60s, only hers had the light-through channel selector rather than the window dial the 170T072 has, and the cabinet design (especially the front control panel) was slightly different. Otherwise, however, her set and the 'T072 on ebay could have been twins. Same screen size (17", 17DKP4), CRT bezel design and everything else. That model must have been extremely popular in the '60s, in its different designs. My aunt's version of this model was one of the first portable TVs I ever saw with a power transformer and a 5U4 rectifier...man, it weighed a ton! They were well-made, though, and probably lasted much, much longer than the Thomson-built "RCA" color sets we see coming off the assembly lines today.

My aunt gave me her RCA portable when she got a color set in 1968; she had put a note on the back stating "Do not use--couldn't fix it." Well, I did. All it needed, IIRC, was a new tube or two. The tuner in that set was as hot as a firecracker. I was able to receive all three (at that time) local VHF TV stations in Cleveland, with excellent pictures, just using rabbit ears as an antenna, from my home (again at the time) in a suburb some 30 miles from the transmitters. Don't know how well that set would have worked where I live now (in a small town 45 miles from the stations, a definite fringe area), as I got rid of it in the early '70s. I don't even know how well it would have worked on cable, for the same reason.