Yes,

They always had a distinctive smell of burnt dust. I was hooked on radio at the age of 8 when I found one in the river. Occasionally, when I find something like this, I will purchase it and try and make it work again. The worse condition, the better I like it. I found a circuit online. First of all, I got it going again (see the new looking resistors and capacitors in the image). But the wiring was so rotten and decayed, that I only dare run it on 100 Volts high tension rather than the full 250 Volts. I have now removed all the wiring, after first colour-coding the coils. After refurbishing the chassis and hardware, I hope to re-assemble it in full working condition. Maybe "mission impossible," but it makes a change from building model ships.

Bob

Colin,

Valves are no problem whatseover, there are still millions of them around, even unused ones in their original boxes in some cases over 80 or 90 years old. I often used to see them on car boot sales, and built up quite a large collection for nothing. I say "nothing" because when I purchased a large box of valves, I would sell the ones I was not interested on Ebay. The last lot of about 30 valves, I paid £10 for, but sold the ones I didn't want for about £80. I am not especially interested in valuable ones, because if I dropped one, or blew it, I would feel very bad. So I sell them. I picked up three "R" Valves dating back to 1914 for £10. All three lit up, but only one worked, and even so, not very well. I was just going to keep them as curiosities, but on showing them to someone, he offered me £150 for all three, even though I made it clear that two didn't work (apart from lighting up) and one worked but was very poor, He was delighted with them. I prefer the "dirt cheap" valves like in the receiver shown abouve. Unused ones in their origial boxes are about £5 each. Old TV valves such as EF91 and EF80 etc are often to be found at £1 each on Ebay, although postage is usually 2 or 3 pounds. It is good mental exercise getting these old sets to work again, and even the restpring them visually is an interesting job. Just what I needed after the aggravtion of repairing the damaged model of the barque Gulf Stream.

Bob

It is moving along very well now, this was it this morning, but since then, I have cleaned and sprayed the chassis, fitted the mains isolation transformer and the 6.3 Volt LT transformer, aerial terminal, speaker socket and reservoir/smoothing capacitors. Heater wiring commenced.

Bob

I have never had any trouble with old transformers. They are usually soaked in wax and covered in shellac and are probably safer than modern ones. I have now put the transformers in. The large isolating high tension transformer under the chassis, 240 Volts in, 240 Volts out, that just isolates the set from a direct connection with the mains. The 6.3 Volt transformer for the valve heaters is a modern one from Maplin, and is mouted on top of the chassis. The chassis itself is earthed.

Bob

I completed the wiring late this morning. On connecting the aerial and loudspeaker, it did start to work, but not very well. It was very faint, and all I could hear was the station whistles with a bit of distorted speech and music mixed. in. On checking the wiring, I found I had inadvertantly left off the screen decouplig capacitor from the screen grid of the output valve. On putting it in, the volume increased considerably, but it was still quite unstable and whistling and howling most of the time. After a further hour going over the wiring again, and pondering over the matter, I noted that I had not earthed the screening pin of the intermediate frequeny amplifier valve (V2 – EF39). Immediately I earthed it – IT LIVED! . More than adequate volume with no whistling and howling. Very stable, with plenty of stations, including a French station, and what sounded like an Indian station, that was probably a relayed broadcast.

Too dark for photographs, but I am delighted with the performance.

Bob

Edited By Bob Wilson on 05/11/2018 16:30:00

I have heard of old broadcasts coming back after many years But have never come across any myself! Here's hoping! Still some things to do on it. Make a new tuning dial, clean up the case etc, but the hardest part is now over!

Bob

I used to listed to Dick Barton, Journey into Space and Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future. I think they were on Luxenberg, this set does not get Londog wave of 1500 metres –

Bob