Atwater Kent Model 43 "coffin style" find.

[old_coot88]

Although there may be exceptions, all the radios of that vintage I've ever seen cover only up to about 1500 kilocycles (or "khz" in modern terms. Bleah).

[Electronic M]

A friend of mine has a an AK 40 too (he convinced me to fix mine after I fixed his) and he has received Canada, Texas, New york, and some other places on his set with a similarly poor (albeit more highly tweaked) antenna....Though he is using 1920's headphones that can put out a surprising amount of volume.

[dtvmcdonald]

I have a two model 44s, which have a fourth TRF stage. They are fairly good performers.
I certainly can DX with them in my quiet room.

Also .. with these coffin AC AK sets you don't need a ground like you do for a battery set. The AC line acts as the other side of a dipole antenna. I've run antenna simulations on typical house wiring and yes, it really does.

[Kevin Kuehn]

You should ohm out all your RF coil's, especially the antenna coil. Back in the day it was very common for a long wire antenna to take a lightning strike. Or sometimes the fine wires just open up from copper corrosion, although I doubt that's the case on such a well kept set. That one is a real beauty.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

On the other hand, DXing was a fairly common activity with these old TRF sets. My parents grew up in the midwest (Nebraska) on farms in the 20s, and both related childhood memories of evening listening to stations across the country from New York (early in the evening) to Los Angeles (later in the evening). jr

Your folks probably didn't have to deal with 50kW powerhouse radio stations in Nebraska in the '20s. My understanding is that most radio stations of that era were extremely low power (by today's standards), most folks were listening to out-of-town or even out-of-state stations, and there weren't that many radio stations in the entire US at that time. Cincinnati's WLW in the '30s was an experiment that was cut short by the government, because its 500-kW signal was wreaking havoc with other stations in the US and even in other countries; the station was forced to cut back to 50kW at that time. No other US radio station that I am aware of ever attempted such a bold experiment; they couldn't if they wanted to, since the FCC eventually capped the maximum power output any US station could have (under certain conditions, of course) at 50 kW.

DXing in the midwestern US is probably much more interesting than it is in other parts of the country, since a radio listener living in the midwest can likely hear stations from just about anywhere, including the West Coast. Nebraska is near the geographical center of the US, so even with a modest DXing setup one could log many stations in a short period of time. There is much less noise in that part of the US as well, the most interference probably coming from tractor engines and the like.

DXing on the East Coast or the Great Lakes is possible, of course, but the noise level, especially these days with computers and other digital devices, is often high enough to mask extremely weak stations. Case in point: I live in a 12-unit apartment building, 30 miles from downtown Cleveland. I often get noise that sounds like TV horizontal oscillator harmonics between stations on my radios, especially my Zenith C845, which has an RF amplifier stage for AM and FM (one tube functions for both bands). That RF tube amplifies everything the antenna receives, including noise, making it nearly impossible to hear anything much other than the big 50kW stations such as KYW in Philadelphia, KDKA in Pittsburgh, WMAQ (now WSCR) in Chicago, et al.

Other than those stations and the 50kW stations I normally receive from Cleveland (plus a 1kW/0.5kW day/night station in the next town south of here), I don't get much of anything at night other than the HO harmonic noise I mentioned earlier. The smaller 5kW stations in Cleveland usually change their signal patterns at night to favor the greater Cleveland area, so I rarely hear them. One station in a far-eastern Cleveland suburb absolutely drops into the noise shortly after sundown. That station isn't very powerful to begin with (500 watts during daylight hours); their nighttime signal is only 42 watts and directional to the Cleveland area at night, so it couldn't reach my area even under the best of conditions. I once emailed the station's technical department to find out their actual coverage area and found, in the reply, that their 500-watt daytime signal is not meant to reach my area, let alone anywhere east of here...and at night, their 42-watt sharply directional signal is only meant to be heard within about ten miles of the transmitter site, due to several full-time stations on the same frequency. The station had to install additional towers to keep their signal within 10-15 miles of the city of license at night, if they were to run 24 hours a day (the station for decades was 500 watts, daytime only). They have since put their station's audio online, on their Internet website, so the limitations on the signal's range are not nearly the problem they once were, but that's another story.

[dtvmcdonald]

Here in Champaign IL, in a rather noisy building, with a good receiver (say an RCA 121) using my 15 inch loop antenna I can get one (or more, interfering) stations on 95% of frequencies at night. In fact, I can do almost as well with my homebrew 2 transistor regen, just one tuned circuit.

[Titan1a]

AFAIK there weren't any "flamethrowers" in Nebraska until the late 40's.

[Schanz]

Local antique store has had a set like that for a while. Original price was 295 but the last time I was in there they came down some. Still a lot more than I'll pay for a radio. I don't recall if it had a plug though. Good find.

[Tubejunke]

Thank you all and for a lot of good info and interesting reads. Back on the first page someone asked if I had made sure that the three variable capacitors were turning in sync. Indeed they are via what looks like leather strands.

I can't find a need for any repair that has been mentioned like coupling caps or whatnot. The radio works fine. I just didn't know what I was doing as far as properly operating it. On superhets; most of the time if you need an external antenna at all, nearly anything will work. Even an old UHF bow-tie! LOL! Duh! That was pretty dumb of me, but I was trying everything.

With a set that old in the great condition it is in, I hate to say it but it's going to end up more of a conversation piece than something that I use regularly. I am working on getting one of two Zenith Transoceanic 600s working. One is actually the brown leather case model that supposedly is the mother-lode of that type radio. I like the black one better, so I will probably let go of the leather one to recoup what it takes to get the other going.

I do plan on stringing a lot of wire and grounding to my wall receptical on the Atwater Kent just to see what it is capable of. I replaced the #80 rectifier just because I had others that tested stronger. The radio seems a bit louder, but that may be my imagination.....

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

Thank you all and for a lot of good info and interesting reads. Back on the first page someone asked if I had made sure that the three variable capacitors were turning in sync. Indeed they are via what looks like leather strands.

Those straps (they are brass on a AK40) LINK the tuning caps, but they are most likely NOT optimally aligned! The pulleys those strands are wound on attach to the tuning caps with set screws. Tune a station, loosen a set screw of a pulley NOT on the knob shaft, tune that cap INDEPENDENT of the others for best volume, repeat for other cap/pulley not on knob shaft.....This is to a TRF set what IF alignment is to a superhetrodyne. You should see some to MUCH improvement from doing this.

The bands should be reasonably taught to hold that adjustment...If they are not, then there should be a way to shift the caps in their mountings to tighten the bands....It's been a while since I dealt with that procedure so specifics are not coming to me.

[Tubejunke]

Hey, thanks Tom. I will give that a try. I still haven't gotten around to applying an ample antenna. What I do pick up is clear and reasonably loud considering what it is. I really don't know how loud that loud would have been then, but it easily fills the room.

[Olorin67]

many stations were low power when that radio was made, one of the first milwaukee stations (WSOE) had a 150 watt transmitter in the mid 20's. People in rural areas didnt have much chance of picking up much in the daytime. The early triodes had a gain of maybe 10 at best. The introduction of screen grid tubes in 1929 or so really was a revolutionary improvement.