Old Time Radios! Restoration and Repair

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1   A brief history of radio receivers

Nineteenth-century experiments

Transatlantic wireless

New inventions

Broadcasting

Development of radio receivers

Crystal sets—regenerative detector receivers—Tuned radio frequency receivers—Neutrodyne receivers—Second-generation TRF radios—Superheterodyne receivers

2   Vacuum tube radios

Radio construction styles

Early vacuum tubes

3   Vacuum tubes—how they work

Edison effect

Thermionic emission of electrons

The vacuum tube diode

Cathodes—Diode construction—Diode operation

Triode vacuum tubes

Tetrode vacuum tubes

Pentode vacuum tubes

Beam power tubes

Other matters to consider

Multipurpose tubes

Tube bases and envelopes

Testing vacuum tubes

Vacuum tube testers—Short-circuit tester—Emission testers—Transconductance testers—Commercial tube testers

4   Radio receivers: The basics

Radio signals

The tuner

Tuned radio-frequency radios

Superheterodyne radios

Radio example

5   Radio power-supply circuits

Battery-operated sets

ac power supplies

Components of the ac power supply

Transformers—Transformer construction—Is that transformer shorted?—Rectifiers—Ripple filtering

Solid-state rectifiers

Selecting solid-state rectifier diodes

Voltage regulators

ac/dc power supplies

All American Five radio power supplies

6   The audio section

Audio reproducers

Earphones—Loudspeakers

Audio preamplifier circuits

Volume-control circuits

Tone controls

Audio-output stages

Classes of audio power amplifier—Class-A power amplifiers—Push-pull class B and class AB audio power amplifiers—Screen grid feedback circuits

Replacing volume, tone or RF gain controls

Replacing multiresistors

Replacing electromagnet loudspeakers with permanent loudspeakers

7   The radio front-end: rf amplifiers, first detectors, and if amplifiers

Tuned resonant circuits

Vectors—Inductance and inductors—Combining inductors—Adjustable coils—Inductors in ac circuits

Capacitors and capacitance

Units of capacitance—Breakdown voltage—Circuit symbols for capacitors—Fixed capacitors—Other capacitors—Variable capacitors—Capacitors in ac circuits—Voltage and current in capacitor circuits

LC resonant circuits

Series-resonant circuits—Parallel-resonant circuits

Tuned RF/IF transformers

Construction of RF/IF transformers—Bandwidth of RF/IF transformers

RF amplifier circuits

Superheterodyne receivers

Superheterodyne local-oscillator circuits—Pentagrid converter circuits

8   AM detector and automatic volume-control circuits

Review of amplitude modulation

AM detectors—Fleming and DeForest detectors—Plate detection—Grid-leak detectors—Regenerative detectors—Modern diode detectors—Solid-state diode detectors

Automatic volume control circuits

Tweet filters

9   Radio repair bench test equipment

Multimeters

The VOM—The VTVM—The DMM

Older instruments

Signal generators

Audio generators—Function generators—RF signal generators

Oscilloscopes

dc power supplies

Other instruments

10   Basic radio troubleshooting

Hum in the radio output (radio works otherwise)

Power-supply ripple hum—60 Hz nontunable hum—Tunable hum

Dead radio

Finding the defective stage

Weak signal reception

Motorboating

Noise problems

Oscillations

Microphonics—Chirps and birdies—Tunable oscillations—Other high-frequency oscillations

Distortion

Loudspeaker—Defective vacuum tubes—Shorted cathode bypass capacitors—Open or increased-value resistors—Shorted or leaky coupling capacitors—Shorted or open output-transformer winding

11   Troubleshooting intermittent problems

Finding the intermittent

Mechanically intermittent—Thermal intermittents

Problems with IF and RF transformers

12   Radio alignment techniques

AM radio receivers

Coupling the signal generator to the radio—Signal output-level indicator—AM alignment procedure

FM radio receivers

Alignment tools—Alignment using an unmodulated generator—Alignment using a sweep generator

Stereo section alignment

Alignment tools

Conclusion

13   Repairing water damage to radios

Cleaning steps

Drying procedures

Testing

14   Electrical safety on the workbench

Electrical shock

What to do for an electrical shock victim

How much current is fatal?

Is high current, low voltage safe?

Common hazardous electrical shock situations

Some cures for the problems

Some general advice on safety

Conclusion

Appendix: Component color code

Index

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR PERMISSION TO USE COPYRIGHT MATERIAL GO TO RCA CONSUMER Electronics Division for use of material from The Receiving Tube Manual, and the American Radio Relay League (225 Main Street, Newington, CT 06111) for material from the 1952 edition of their incomparable The Radio Amateur’s Handbook. I also wish to thank John and Ginny Struck, who typed a major portion of the manuscript for me, and Joe Koester of the Mid-Atlantic Antique Radio Club, who allowed me to photograph radios from his collection for illustrations in this book.

Introduction

IT IS A LITTLE DISCONCERTING FOR A GUY AS YOUNG AS ME TO WALK THROUGH A HAMFEST OR antique radio club meeting and see radio receivers that I worked on when they were under warranty described as antiques or classics! But classic and antique radios are very popular today, and many thousands of people now collect and restore these golden oldies. Although I commenced my radio repair career in 1959,1 worked on radios from a 1923 model up to the latest models (latest as of nearly twenty years ago). The period that I serviced radios spanned the vacuum tube age to the earliest years of the integrated circuit age. When you read about troubleshooting radios of any era in this book, you are getting the story from one who was really there.

After the initial shock of advancing age, I discovered that only a few people still have the old skills needed to keep these sets in good repair and working properly. But once you read this book, you will also be an initiated member of the small (but hopefully growing) band who can make those old hummers work again. It’s relatively easy for almost anyone, even though tubes (and now even transistors) are a thing of the past.

The first chapter of this book is a brief history of radio receiver design, starting with the Branly coherers and tappers that Marconi and other early pioneers used, up to the modern superheterodyne receiver. For a while during the 1920s, a number of different designs were offered. Most of these designs are covered in chapter 1. We will also take a quick look at radio receivers over the decades in chapter 2, without going into too much detail. In chapter 3 we discuss the basic theory of vacuum tubes. It is here that we will recover an ancient technology that is needed to understand classic and antique radios.

Chapters 5 through 8 go into detail on vacuum tube circuits found in radio receivers. You will learn about RF amplifier, mixer, local oscillator and converter circuits, and then in chapter 7 we will move on to IF amplifier circuits. In chapter 8 we cover the automatic gain control (AGC) and various detector circuits. Various audio amplifiers and preamplifiers are covered in chapter 9. This discussion will range from the early headphone amplifier to later designs that approached high fidelity performance. Loudspeakers are also covered in the audio chapter. In chapter 5 you will find an extensive discussion of power supply circuits used in radios.

But I’m sure you are interested in diving into the material. Antique and classic radios are a growing and very engaging hobby, and those who can repair or rebuild these sets are especially valued in the community of antique radio fans.

1

A Brief History

of Radio Receivers

RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCASTING ARE SO WIDESPREAD TODAY, AND HAVE BECOME so familiar, that we often take them for granted. Live satellite coverage from all corners of the earth is routine. But at one time radio—even local radio—was mysterious and exciting. Few things caught the public imagination in the early 1920s like radio broadcasting. From a few enthusiasts—often as not seen as cranks by their friends and neighbors—radio grew to an immense industry in only a few thrilling decades.

Early radio was called wireless (and still is in some parts of the world) because it allowed low-distance communications like the telegraph, but without the vulnerable wires strung from point to point. Wireless telegraphy also allowed service to points not normally open to landline telegraphy, such as remote mountain areas and ships at sea. In fact, it was probably mariners who first showed real interest in the practical use of wireless telegraphy.

Although wireless research and development started in the nineteenth century, the dream of wireless telegraphy and telephony eluded experimenters for many years. However, advances were made, albeit slowly, so that by the turn of the twentieth century the technology was ready for a period of fast-paced, almost startling progress. Oddly enough, much of the early radio industry was garage-born, and indeed some radio companies manufactured equipment in such informal quarters up until the 1930s.

Nineteenth-Century Experiments

One of the earliest, possibly the very first, example of wireless communication occurred in the United States in 1865. On a mountain in West Virginia, a Washington, D.C. dentist named Mahlon Loomis flew a kite that carried a large square of copper gauze. A wire connected the kite to a grounded galvanometer below. On another mountain 18 miles away a similar setup was erected. When one of these transmitters was excited with electricity, the other galvanometer quivered, indicating a received signal.

Unfortunately for the future of wireless, Loomis’s work received only muted enthusiasm from scientists and business observers. Loomis didn’t receive proper credit for his discovery until much later, after the skeptics were convinced—when no one could any longer deny the evidence that wireless telegraphy was possible.

Other nineteenth-century experiments were carried out by scientific giants such as Michael Faraday, Nichola Tesla, and Heinrich Hertz. Hertz managed to generate signals as high as 500 MHz and transmit them across short distances, proving positively that wireless telegraphy was possible. But Hertz’s groundbreaking experiments were more scientific investigation than practical invention, so it was left to others to realize the art of wireless communications.

In the late 1890s, an energetic Italian inventor named Guglielmo Marconi started investigations and experiments that culminated in his achieving everlasting fame in the radio world. He first experimented with wireless over short distances of about 100 yards or less—across the garden of his father’s home in Italy.

Ignored by the Italian government, Marconi took himself and his apparatus to England, where in 1896 he reached across a distance of some 2 miles over the Salisbury Plain with his wireless telegraph. Marconi rapidly increased this distance to 7 miles, and by the end of 1897 achieved distances of 10 miles between ships at sea. In 1899, Marconi accepted a suggestion of Sir Oliver Lodge and inserted a transformer device called a Branly coherer between the antenna and the detector. This new arrangement improved the sensitivity of the receiver and made it possible for Marconi to transmit across the English Channel—a distance of 32 miles. Finally, Marconi was ready for the big test that launched wireless into the public imagination—transatlantic telegraphy.

Transatlantic Wireless

The coast of Newfoundland in December is windswept and cold—a good place for all but natives to avoid. But it was to Newfoundland that Guglielmo Marconi went in the late fall of 1901, arriving at St. Johns on December 6 to conduct a world-changing experiment—transatlantic wireless (radio) telegraphy. Prior to that time, wireless had been little more than experimental, operating only over relatively short distances.

Marconi had excited the American imagination a few years earlier, in September 1899, when his wireless telegraphy apparatus was used to report the results of the International Yacht Races off the coast of New Jersey. For the first time, those ashore could have a real-time report of a race in progress off-shore and out of sight.

The success of this event led to demonstrations to the United States Navy in October and November 1899. Marconi installed his gear aboard the U.S.S. New York, an armored cruiser, the battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts, the U.S.S. Porter, a torpedo boat, and at a shore location at Highland Light, Navesink, New Jersey. The first official U.S. Navy wireless message was transmitted on November 2, 1899. It was sent from the New York to the shore station, requesting arrangements be made for refueling.

Despite the success of Marconi’s apparatus aboard ships, ranges were still very limited. A typical shore station had a range of a few hundred miles, while shipboard transmitters were limited to as little as 40 miles and did not transmit quite as far as the shore stations under the best of conditions. It was to prove that wireless (renamed radio in the United States in 1910) could work over large, indeed intercontinental, distances that Marconi went to Newfoundland in 1901.

Marconi had erected a powerful spark-gap transmitter at Poldhu, Cornwall (United Kingdom), and arranged for his operators to transmit a standard message consisting of the letter S in Morse code at scheduled times during each day. On his windswept hill in Newfoundland, Marconi and his assistants erected the most sensitive radio apparatus then available and raised an antenna 400 feet into the sky, tethering it to a large kite. They listened for the elusive S transmissions. Finally, on December 24, the signal S was heard around noontime. An excited Marconi called his assistants to verify the reception, and then spread the news to the world.

The news of Marconi’s success electrified the world. Skepticism melted and the wireless became accepted. Even today, when intercontinental radio is commonplace, Marconi’s accomplishment is significant because of the crude and terribly insensitive equipment that was state of the art in 1901.

The message was clear to nearly everyone. No longer would ships at sea be out of touch for weeks at a time as they crossed the storm-tossed, iceberg-ridden North Atlantic. When mishaps occurred, the possibility of rescue was greatly enhanced once ships carried wireless gear. If the operator could send out a distress message, then other shipboard operators and shore stations could be alerted, and ships could be diverted to the scene to pick up survivors.

New Inventions

The evolution of radio advanced only slowly until the invention of the vacuum tube. In 1877, Thomas Edison had noted a strange current flowing in one of his electric light bulbs. Edison had placed a small, positively charged electrode, or anode, inside the bulb in an experiment to find a means for extending the useful life of his electrical lights (themselves a new invention) by decreasing the carbon emissions that coated the glass. When the lamp was turned on, a small current flowed from the light filament to the anode. This current flow was duly noted in Edison’s logbook and is now called the Edison effect. But Thomas Edison was deeply involved in electric lighting, so he missed this potential invention.

In 1904, an Englishman named JA. Fleming invented and patented a device based on the Edison effect. He created a two-electrode vacuum tube, or diode. The diode has the property of passing electrical current in only one direction, like a water valve, so it was immediately dubbed the Fleming valve. The nickname valve is still used in the U.K. to denote vacuum tubes.

Unfortunately, the Fleming valve, although useful for detecting wireless signals, was not much more effective than other nonvacuum tube detectors then on the market. It was, however, a fundamental patent and so formed the basis for a series of lawsuits in years to come. It is unfortunate that much of the early history of radio is a history of litigation between contentious giants who were too selfish to realize that cooperation would have made them all richer.

American inventor and scientist Dr. Lee DeForest started his own company with the help (it later turned out) of less than totally scrupulous financiers. Although the company seemed to prosper, it fell on hard times rather quickly because of the financial misdealings of the partners. DeForest always maintained that he was ignorant of these problems, but was not widely believed at the time.

Lee DeForest’s greatest achievement was the invention of the first amplifying vacuum tube. He inserted a wire mesh grid in the space between the negative electrode, or cathode, and the anode of Fleming’s valve. When a signal voltage was impressed across the grid-cathode path, the signal voltage appearing across the anode-cathode was found to be magnified. Amplification is the control of a larger signal by a smaller signal. The DeForest audion tube was to prove pivotal in the invention of future radio apparatus.

Broadcasting

Although radiotelephone transmission was achieved as early as December 1906 (from the station at Brandt’s Island, Mass.), and the Secretary of the Navy transmitted a message to ships at sea from the famous Navy station NAA, Arlington, Va. in 1916, it was not until 1920 that broadcasting became a reality in the United States.

Pittsburgh’s KDKA, which is still on the air, grew out of radiotelephone experiments by Dr. Frank Conrad that were initiated in 1920 under the auspices of Westinghouse. On November 2, 1920, KDKA made history by broadcasting the results of the presidential election that sent Warren G. Harding to the White House. The broadcast commenced at 6:00 P.M. and lasted until well into the next day.

Development of Radio Receivers

This book is about classic radio receivers—anything from the early Branly coherers to the beginning of the solid-state era. Most of the radios that fall into this category are vacuum tube models, so it is to those that we will turn our attention first. In the rest of this chapter you will discover how the art of radio receiver design developed to its present state of sophistication.

The job of any radio receiver is to detect a radio wave and retrieve the information that it carries. It must select the desired signal from the large number of radio waves on the air, exclude others, amplify it to a useful level, and then extract whatever information that it carries (modulation). How well any given design performs these functions determines the quality of the specific receiver.

The very earliest receivers are not easily recognizable as such by today’s standards. One early receiver was a magnetic induction coil placed in close proximity to a compass. Deflection of the compass needle provided an indication of a radio wave from a nearby spark-gap transmitter. Range was limited to only a few meters—basically from one laboratory bench to another, or as in the case of radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, across the backyard garden. Other early detectors included sensitive spark gaps and telegraphic electromechanical tappers.

The holy grail of early radio was increased transmission distance, which in practical terms meant that the questors worked on more powerful transmitters, improved transmitting and receive antennas, and more sensitive receivers. As congestion of the airwaves grew worse, the designers of radio receivers also had to address the issue of selectivity, as well as sensitivity. Selectivity is the ability of the radio receiver to separate stations that are close together, without undue interference between them. One early public demonstration was marred by competitors Lee DeForest and Guglielmo Marconi using the same frequency.

Transmitters in the early days of radio consisted of spark gaps (several different designs), Alexanderson alternators, vacuum tubes, and other types. Alternator transmitters were similar to the alternators that generate electricity in automobiles or electrical power plants. The frequency of alternator output is a function of the number of poles and the rotation speed. The principal difference between the power station alternator and the radio transmitter alternator is that there are many more poles and a faster rotating speed.

Vacuum tubes did not become practical for transmitters until the early 1920s, although some costly experimental models existed much earlier than 1920. Even in the 1920s, tubes were extremely expensive, produced only a low power level at RF frequencies, tended toward instability, and were short-lived.

Transmitting antennas for commercial wireless telegraphy stations (there were no radio broadcasting stations until 1920) were tall, steel towers, not unlike the towers seen at AM broadcasting stations today. For example, at Navy station NAA in Arlington, Va. (Fig. 1-1) there were one 600-foot and two 400-foot towers. Those towers were taken down just prior to World War II to accommodate Washington National Airport, which was then under construction only a short distance away.

1-1 The Navy’s station NAA in Arlington, Va. The two 400-foot towers and one 600-foot tower was torn down in 1941 to make room for National Airport. The towers were re-erected on another site near Annapolis, Md.

The coherer is now attributed to Branly, but it was originally invented in slightly different form by a Professor Hughs in 1878. Unfortunately for Branly, Marconi adopted the coherer