-=> Roy J. Tellason said to Greg Mayman
 -=> about "*BIG* TRANSISTORS" on 01-31-04  12:05.....

 RJT> Those are some thick plates!  What can you do with it?  Display it,  I
 RJT> guess. :-)

I guess so 

 RJT> Those numbers don't ring any bells here.  Would that be one of the
 RJT> larger 9V variants?  Or maybe the one that's cylindrical,  roughly the
 RJT> size of a C cell? 

No, a square one I think, about 1-1/2 or 2" on a side.

 RJT> Purchased new in Germany in 1960,  the radio also had SW and an FM band
 RJT> that only went to 100 MHz for some reason.

The European FM band only went to 99MHz, I think. I used to have
some data on the old FM bands around the world, but it is filed
away somewhere...

 RJT> That was a rather unusual radio,  the "automatic" tuning
portion of it
 RJT> consisted of a _motor_ attached to the tuning mechanism.  The on-off

I remember seeing a TV turret tuner that was motor driven. It
had a solenoid controlled clutch so when the power went off the
turret stopped immediately while the motor coasted down. IMO a
much better idea than brakes.

But I've never seen continuous tuning with a motor.
OTOH why not? 

 RJT> switch was also a bit odd,  located at the rear and connected to a
 RJT> button in the front with a bit of dial cord!

Yes, I have seen ideas like that. It was better than running the
mains halfway across the chassis to a switch on the volume
control and then trying to get rid of the hum it caused.

 RJT> It was a heck of a nice radio,  but unfortunately all tubes,  and
 RJT> rather fussy about which brand you put in there.  I can still remember

Ah yes, I remember some sets like that. One set I had would
oscillate if you used a high gain tube in the IF, but was fine
with one that was a bit "flat".

 RJT> one time when it let the smoke out,  and on opening the back I saw
 RJT> where someone had put a bit of metal shaft across the fuse holder --
 RJT> and the power transformer was toast.  Somehow (this was still back in
 RJT> the sixties) it got repaired properly.  I'd like to find the guy who
 RJT> did that bit of sabotage and let him know just what I thought of it...

Some people just can't be trusted with anything electrical or
electronic.

I had to replace the mains fuse on an 8-track cartridge player
where the original one (0.5A) had "popped" and the owner replaced
it with a 10A auto fuse!

The original fault was a shorted diode in the power supply. The
owner's "repair" let all the smoke out of the transformer.

The agents quoted about $50 to import a replacement transformer
-- this was in the 70's and $50 was REAL money -- but fortunately
we were able to find one locally that was close enough in voltage
and EXACTLY the same size core size as the original!

All we had to do was swap the mounting bracket from the old one.

We lost was the 240/120 volt selection on the primary, but as he
had no intentions of taking it overseas that didn't matter.

   ,-./\
  /     \ From Greg Mayman, in beautiful Adelaide, South Australia
  \_,-*_/    "Queen City of The South"    34:55 S  138:36 E
       v

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