National NC98

[davet753]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Your national is reminding me that I need to get back to my national HRO-50 restoration...I recapped it and let it sit. It needs so much more cosmetically and electrically....I'm going to have to remember the car polish trick. I have that stuff around for my car, but never thought to try it on anything else.

Metal cabinets like National and Hallicrafters used can be brought back to life again with a little effort. I used turtle wax compound to clean up the cabinet, then a little polish followed by a wipe down with a clean rag to bring back the shine, and then a good, solid coat of pure carnauba wax to protect it. It now has that "wet look"

The trick is to use a small electric orbital buffer (less than $30 @ Harbor Freight) to do the work. I used very little pressure, and let the machine do the work. That way, there was no damage to the lettering.

Electrically, this radio needed minimal work. After finding a 10 meg resistor that had drifted up past 13 meg, I ended up checking every one and found a couple others that were out of spec. Using the instructions from the Sams Photofact, I done a complete alignment job. While it doesn't perform like my Hallicrafters SX62, the NC98 is a pretty hot receiver. The AM band performance is amazing, and the crystal-controlled adjustable selectivity feature works great (while having a minimal effect on sensitivity).