Posted 14 years ago
PrecisionR…
(11 items)
Left to right: (1) Westinghouse Type DB Detector - you can switch between quartz and lead crystals. (2) Westinghouse AR, RADA, and Type CB Loading Coil. The loading coil moved the reception into what was considered "shortwave" - now the standard AM broadcast band. My grandfather helped Donald Little, Forest Mabry, and E Howard Armstrong with the design of the AR rf Amplifier. He once said of it, "If you were lucky, you could achieve a gain of 1". (3) The rotary spark gap, switch, and key were part of my grandfather's ham set when he was 1QX. He was keying the high voltage side, and made the key contacts using two silver dimes. Spark was provided by a Packard ignition coil. The motor is an Emerson Induction Motor, and operates on 60 cycle (oops! Hertz) 110vac house current. (4) The Westinghouse RS was used for internal plant-to-plant communications. This particular one was "liberated" by Donald Little, when he transferred from Pittsburgh to the Wilkins Ave Baltimore Plant. Don Little was the station broadcast engineer at KDKA when they broadcast the returns in the 1920 Presidential Election. E Howard Armstrong remained at his home broadcast station, standing by to take over if KDKA had transmission problems and went off the air.
HI I am a proud owner of a 1940 Philco floor model # 40-180. We love the radio and would like to tune it in better.... any help or advice is greatly appreciated . All good things... john lennox
CHeck the capacitors - especially the electrolytics. They are probably a bit tired, and out of specification. You can get modern ones that are small enough to fit up inside the original "cans", so oyu don't have to sacrifice looks. Value of a replacement, if you have to vary from original should be within 10% of the original, and voltage rating , if you must change, has to be higher, never lower. If you know someone with a dynamic tube testor, you should check all the tubes. They may test good on a cheap testor, but show some "gassiness" on a mutual conductance testor. Those are the two things that usually go out of tune in older radios. Don't try to change the alignment capacitors (the little screw-adjustable ones on top of the main tuning capacitor) unless you have alignment signal generator and such that are known to be in good condition. After you do the caps and tubes, you may find you can get a little better reception by tuning to a weak station at the top end of the AM broadcast band, and tweaking the antenna tuner for strongest signal.