Rca Ctc-15

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by Charlie
Tonight I decided to hook up a picture toob to this CTC15 chassis. The only CRT I felt safe plugging in was in a wooden CTC11 set... this particular set's toob has severe cataracts and is weak on one of the guns, but works. I yanked the 11 chassis out, and half-ass squeezed the 15 chassis partially into the cabinet. It's not pretty, but will do for testing purposes.

After plugging the horz output tube back in, I had the pleasant sound of soft HV crackle, and then light on the screen with stations tuning in good... so good that I actually got a few Houston stations 90 miles away in addition to our own by only using an 18 inch jumper wire as an antenna.

The picture looked a bit out of focus, but that's likely from the cataracts... they're pretty bad all the way to the center of the screen. Looks like the color circuits are working as well. I let it run for 15 minutes and then decided it was way past bedtime.

Tomorrow I'll run it some more and do a few checks here and there. The chassis needs all of the pots cleaned, but was out of cleaner spray so I'll get some in the morning. Still got a few caps to upgrade with orange drops.

Since things are looking positive for this chassis so far, I'll get started on stripping the cabinet that it's going in. Feels good to know I'm making progress!

I was going to take some pictures of tonight's progress, but realized I left my camera at the camp today. Oh well. Here's a photo of the 11 that the 15 is squeezed into. As you can see, it needs some serious eye surgery!

Charlie,

How can you tell just by looking at the front of the set the CRT is defective? (BTW, what are cataracts on a picture tube? I've seen them mentioned in threads here, but never really knew what kind of defects they actually are [never heard of them until now], even after 30-odd years of experimenting with old sets back in my hometown.) Looks to me like the screen is just very dirty (filthy, even), and a good cleaning should have it looking a lot better.

I couldn't believe it when I read in your post that you were getting not only your area's local Beaumont/Port Arthur, TX TV stations, but also Houston stations 90 miles distant, on your RCA CTC15, just using an 18-inch alligator clip lead. The signal propagation conditions that day must have been incredible or even phenomenal. I am an amateur radio operator and have gotten incredible distance reception on both my radios and TVs in the summer, but I had external antennas on my sets at the time. My best distance reception on TV was KTWO-TV, the then-NBC affiliate in Cheyenne, Wyoming, one summer about 15 years ago, when I still lived in suburban Cleveland, but I have also received one of your area's local stations (channel 4 in Port Arthur, Texas) during a temperature inversion about 25 years ago, give or take a couple years. The reason I was able to receive so many stations in the Southwest is that my TV antenna was aimed in that direction (the local TV stations in my area at the time, and where I live now as well, all transmit from a Cleveland suburb some 45 miles southwest of here). When the TV bands opened up to the Southwest, the floodgates opened up and I would get incredible reception from Wyoming, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida . . . literally, you name it. The pictures, as long as they lasted, were often good enough to watch, but much of the time I would get a hodgepodge of stations, almost impossible to decipher. When one signal would eventually fade out, another would appear underneath it, and so on.

I have cable where I live today (TV reception from Cleveland, at least on VHF channels, is fair to poor at best here without it or a satellite hookup, even with a fringe-area outdoor antenna with an amplifier; in fact I cannot get one channel, NBC channel 3, on an antenna--the irony, however, is that most of the Cleveland UHF stations come in clear as a bell even on rabbit ears), which has pretty much put the kibosh on distant TV reception for me (I cannot use outdoor antennas here as I live in an apartment building). However, a couple summers ago, there must have been a temperature inversion, as channel 4 (one of our local UHF stations is downconverted to that channel by the cable company) was a mess, with Venetian blind interference, co-channel, you name it. Couldn't make out what stations were wiping out the local station (UPN channel 43, downconverted to 4), though I think it may have been either WDIV NBC4 in Detroit or WCMH NBC4 in Columbus, Ohio (out here on the fringes of the Cleveland stations, one can never tell what might appear on vacant channels, or between the local stations on the FM radio dial for that matter, during an inversion or even during normal weather in the spring and summer). I called the cable company and was told the problem was due to weather conditions, as I had suspected all along.

BTW (2): I just took another look at your CTC15 in the CTC11's cabinet. Looks to me like the 15 fits rather well in there. Am I overlooking something? I ask this because it seems to me you've managed to fit the CTC15 completely into the other cabinet, not just partially (as you mentioned).

BTW (3): Once you refinish that cabinet you will have one fine piece of furniture. RCA offers only one console TV today, as does GS/Zenith; I suspect the cabinets are made by a cabinet maker in North Carolina (Thomasville comes to mind). However, most TVs today are table models; as I've mentioned elsewhere in this forum that most folks wanting consoles these days simply get an entertainment-center cabinet and fit the TV, VCR and possibly a bookshelf stereo in it. These cabinets are nice, but the large ones can take up an entire wall (a friend of mine has his TV, VCR and stereo in one of these monsters; I've seen it--yes, it takes up a good part of a wall in his family room). I put my own TV, VCR and cable box on a small utility cart just a tad smaller than a small console; it all fits nicely in a corner of my apartment (my stereo is immediately adjacent to my computer, with the speakers on the floor on either side of my desk; my avatar shows the TV installation.)

BTW (4): The armoire-styled console TV/stereo units made by RCA and Magnavox in the late '60s would have been great for people living in apartments as small as or even smaller than mine, as I've mentioned here before. I've often wondered why RCA doesn't offer this style of cabinet, with an up-to-date TV in it of course, today. (The company does have one console in its deluxe line of 27-inch TVs, but it is a standard floor model.) If I were a betting man (which I'm not), I'd be willing to bet the vertical console design, even without the stereo, would be an instant hit with apartment dwellers or folks with small living rooms wanting large-screen CRT-based TVs.