Sylvania 518

One of the antique radios I pulled out of my family farm shop this past summer was this bright red Sylvania 518.  It's actually in fairly good shape, although a brief start at cleaning the grime off revealed some staining and scratches on top I hoped to avoid.  At least the dial glass paint is intact!  The dial string is broken, of course... but overall its really in good condition. I did a basic recap here, and checked all the tubes.  No problems, right? Wrong.  There's an intermittent short somewhere in this radio that is a real head scratcher.  I can't reproduce...

Hallicrafters 8R40

Another recent acquisition is this boatanchor, a Hallicrafters 8R40 communications receiver.  Supposedly the same internally as the older S-40, but in an "updated" form factor....  It bears a large resemblance to my 5R10 that I use in my shack, but also has dials for BFO and "Sensitivity" (I'm guessing RF gain?) and goes all the way into the 6m band. Overall, its not in terrible condition.  It's dirty and fairly rusty.  Does not work, no sound, not even a peep.  I'm hoping its something to do with the capacitors and not something terminal like a bad transformer or...

Hallicrafters S-120

Yeah, I know.  It's been too long between updates again.  Doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything.  I managed to snag a Hallicrafters S-120 shortwave receiver off of that auction site for a song.  Imagine my joy when I get this girl in here, and she's almost pristine in condition.  It even worked, but not well.  So...  under the knife she goes. After a bit of contemplation, I decided to leave the small silicon selenium (I caught that!) rectifier alone.  At some point I will need to swap this out with a proper resistor-diode combination, but for now, it...

What’s Up at ARB?!

Dammit, I just realized its been like 3 months since my last post.  A lot has been going on on the home front, and I've been forced to work on other things besides my radios.  Namely the cars, the house, and my health (nothing serious, just some things which require time)...  Doesn't mean I've completely abandoned it, just I've not been going full-on like I did this time last year.  So here's a rundown of what I've been up to with the radios. Moved the now complete (mostly) '63 Airline console into my office.  Of course as soon as I get it in there I find that there...

Turntable Woes

[EDIT: Further edit! SMC doesn't have the idler, but thankfully it was just the needle.  I don't have install my expen$ive cartridge just yet....  I've re-assembled most of this, and will update the site soon!] So its time to get to work on the turntable in this '63 Airline WG-2553A.  Actually, surprisingly, it worked quite well!  I grabbed a crummy old LP that I was given in the same 'you want this stuff?' lot as the stereo, and threw it on there.  Lo and behold it played quite well.  There are some definite issues with the changer mechanism, and with the...

1953 Airline WG-1570B

I've been trying to get one of these since I first saw one last year, and finally made the score.  I mean, it doesn't get much more mid-1950's-design than this, does it?  With FM, AND a built in phono (read: ipod!) input.... (This could be a '51 model, given previous Airline naming schemes, reversing the first two digits, but RadioMuseum says '53.... *shrug*) Ok, so she's pretty filthy, has a nasty filter-cap hum, AND come to find out there is a hairline crack in the case on the rear-top-left corner (grrrr.)  The crack isn't that bad at all, I'm not at all surprised the...

The Airline Lives….

So I'm finally finding a bit of time to get back into the shop and work on the Airline.  Its been nearly a year since I first acquired this one, and its the one that kicked my butt into this hobby.  After taking a look "under the hood" I decided I needed a bit of practice before diving in head first.  (And this website is the result!) Finally getting back into this one, it didn't look nearly as complicated!   The power-supply problems I eluded to in an earlier post didn't actually exist.  It was my poor memory on how things were actually hooked up on the speaker...

Back in the game….

You may have noticed (but probably not) that I really haven't had any posts the last few months.  I've been working on getting my amatuer ticket, and I'm now a general-class ham!  Awesome.  My exploits will be documented over on KF5OLV.com.  Just started there so not much to look at right now.  Of course my SWL stuff is still alive at DXLog.com.  I need to come up with a decent way to combine all three of these sites together....  (I have some ideas...) Apart from that, real life keeps getting in the way, as it sometimes does.  Other, more pressing projects and...

Started the ’63 Airline WG2553

Yes, I am finally getting around to working on the big one, the one that pushed me head-first into this snowball hobby....  the big '63 stereo Airline console. After dealing with a few radios now, and especially that '48 Philco, the underside of this chassis really doesn't look so bad!  The biggest hurdle is going to be trying to find a location to mount all *six* electrolytic replacements.  I would like to leave the original cans in place on top, and put the new ones underneath, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible. The majority of the caps on this are ceramic...

Weekend Update with ARB…

Well, I actually got into the shop and did a few things with the radios this weekend.  Yay for me! I attacked the Novatech 710-WN from a different angle, this time testing the tubes.  Lo and behold the 50C5 output tube was dead as a doornail.  That would probably explain the lack of any output.  Replaced the funny-looking cylindrical selenium rectifier with a diode/resistor combo, but have no way to know if it works yet.  New 50C5 ordered and her put back on the shelf. Then I went after one of the Knight VTVM's I got in.  Cleaned it up, put a shiny new coat of...

More on the Air-O-Ear

This little set is going to be trickier than I thought.  Turns out that little capacitor looking thing is actually some sort of selenium rectifier.  As is the big blue job right smack in the center of the set.  I located a useful document about replacing those with a resistor-diode combination, so that shouldn't be too hard. I recapped the rest, except for the replacements added by the messy past repair job.  No joy in radioville.  Same nothing.  Will have to check those old replacements for shorts or open and go from there... and then the SR replacement. The hardest...

Novatech 710-WN VHF Aircraft Receiver

this little gem in last night. It's a VHF receiver for picking up aircraft/tower traffic. Doesn't work in its present condition. Looks like somebody replaced some of the electrolytic caps, although pretty sloppily. Also have to figure out what to do with the asbestos (I think) heat shield inside. Obviously it goes away, but replaced by what? The 3 remaining wax caps need to be swapped. The rest are already ceramic discs, unsure if they are original or not. Stay tuned...