There Has to Be a Better Way.

[Winky Dink]

When I finished everything under the chassis, I mentioned to my wife that I was ready to reinstall the tuner. She usually doesn't show much interest, but this time she offered to help put the tuner on the chassis:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Yeah--she's from Boston.

I did finish reassembling the chassis except for the "shadow meter." I tested the filament circuit with a 6-volt battery, putting the tubes in one at a time. Then I brought out the isolation transformer and the variac (Chinese knock-off). I gradually increased the power, but at 90 volts I didn't even get a glimmer from the pilot light. Arg-g-gh! I forgot to turn on the RADIO! I started again, got the tubes all aglow and the transformer outputs were all good, but absolutely no sound. Arg-g-gh! I forgot to plug in the speaker! Again, this time with the radio turned on and the speaker plugged in, I got up to 115 volts, and still got nothing but dead silence. Arg-g-gh! I forgot to put in the 80--the only tube that was missing when I bought the set.

Finally, I got some response. I can tune in a couple of AM stations, but get howling, growling, and squealing when I get close to tuning the other local stations. On the "police band" I get a lot of noise, and on the shortwave I get nothing. That may sound disappointing, but I'm delighted that I could get it to talk at all. I'm going to leave it alone for a couple of days and then try to make it work like a proper radio.

Thanks for the help I've received so far. Here are upper- and under-chassis before/after photos. You can download them, print and frame them. They make perfect Christmas gifts!





Happy holidays to all.