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Advice re car radio


umpire111

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He could be different and seek out a 1920's crystal set with phones. Not sure of the price but they need no power.

Put one together for my grandson on his birthday, just found it on the net, glad I didnt pay for it https://www.crafts4kids.co.uk/flights-of-fancy-radio-receiver

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Cats whisker.

Ah! Memories. I remember using a rusty razor blade and safety pin as a "Cats Whisker" Lot of bother getting the pin point on the best rusty spot on the blade with sufficient tension to stay there. It worked fine eventually. Always seemed to fail when trying to demonstrate it to someone else!

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I just switched on my 1965 Transwave large Transistor Radio. It has an aeral wire to connect as well as the earth wire. Runs on flashlight batteries. There is no waveband display or moving needle. It's a set I repaired but the main fault was a dead speaker. That was all. Sound isn't spectacular but I have 5 Live going. It picked up Spain too. The point is this radio probably played Can't Get No Satisfaction in 1965 as well as Beatle numbers. I've no idea who owned it but imagine it being on a kitchen window ledge. I should add I haven't yet go the hang of fixing Tranny's. I found PCB soldering hard. If I did that work again I think I'd try soldering new transitors the opposite side of the board after snipping off the silicon top. Unconventional but less risk of breaking tracks or losing your way.

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I just switched on my 1965 Transwave large Transistor Radio. It has an aeral wire to connect as well as the earth wire. Runs on flashlight batteries. There is no waveband display or moving needle. It's a set I repaired but the main fault was a dead speaker. That was all. Sound isn't spectacular but I have 5 Live going. It picked up Spain too. The point is this radio probably played Can't Get No Satisfaction in 1965 as well as Beatle numbers. I've no idea who owned it but imagine it being on a kitchen window ledge. I should add I haven't yet go the hang of fixing Tranny's. I found PCB soldering hard. If I did that work again I think I'd try soldering new transitors the opposite side of the board after snipping off the silicon top. Unconventional but less risk of breaking tracks or losing your way.

It is very easy to blow transistors when soldering the legs into a PCB without using a heatsink. Needle nosed pliers can be improvised as a temporary heatsink.

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It is very easy to blow transistors when soldering the legs into a PCB without using a heatsink. Needle nosed pliers can be improvised as a temporary heatsink.

That is what we used to do on motherboards. Another trick when replacing blown capacitors (regular problem) was to destroy the can with a pair of sidecutters, leaving the remaining wire "legs" sticking up. The new capacitor was simply soldered to these legs, meaning no soldering necessary on the pcb. A bit rough perhaps, but got the machines up and running on a tight school budget. Needs must when the devil vomits in yer kettle.

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The modern silicon transistors burn out easily but the germanium ones are pretty tough. I screwed up doing my first Tranny solering as I struggled to match connections each side of the board when unsoldering. I tried pushing out with the iron but got minor track damage. I was used to point soldering on tube sets so the PCB work was different. The very first transistors were comfortably large with coloured sleeving. Some had an earth leg. Clearly if you are sure which is emitter, collector and base maybe just less heartache to solder to the other side. The mistake I made was to remove parts, take pics and then my phone got stolen.

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For now I have about 5 valve sets to work on. The most common fault is a broken potentiometer and switch. Also you have to watch out for the resevoir cans. I once voltage tested one of these between negative lug and chassis and got a huge spark. Jumped out of my skin I did. I'd have loved to get the 1939 battery set going but the filaments are very delicate. They must have been to glow on just 2 volts.

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That is what we used to do on motherboards. Another trick when replacing blown capacitors (regular problem) was to destroy the can with a pair of sidecutters, leaving the remaining wire "legs" sticking up. The new capacitor was simply soldered to these legs, meaning no soldering necessary on the pcb. A bit rough perhaps, but got the machines up and running on a tight school budget. Needs must when the devil vomits in yer kettle.

One of my electronic exam questions was how to remove a faulty IC that had been soldered directly to a printed circuit board. I said snit snip the legs through and I passed. That was about 1972 ish

Edited by ditchcrawler
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It's very different to valve soldering. More money in it too, I think. I am a bit weak at modern circuitry. I'm a lot more informed on 1940' to late 1950's design. There were, however, some very early transistor sets that point soldered the transistors and had a positive chassis ground. These were built to be easily serviced. In fact, I don't think the use of PCB is the be all and end all. I prefer both the look and practicality of the early transistors. If I do work on PCB's again I will try to avoid actual removal of components. I will try and snip the legs free and carefully solder from the non tracked side. Maybe if you wanted to be clever you could use a silver track pen although these are costly.

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Don't forget too the transformerless AC/DC bakelite valve radios. These had the filaments in a series chain and resistance line chord to drop 100 volts or so. They also used a half wave rectifier tube. The American ones were viewed as deadly because you're directly coupled to the mains. No transformer secondary to isolate the circuit. You could get shocks off the knob grub screws.

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Today I've been making my radios website. I decided to use a different HTML builder to Wix (that I used last time). Wix I agree is now about the best on the market for DIY websites. However to get a domain name is a fair outlay on Wix. So I found a Russian website builder. I did try Ukoz but that was too technical and way over my head. This other Russia builder is free and 3000 roubles a year for the extras. So soon I hope to have my radio site up and running. It will supply tubes such as Marconi and GEC. Also tranny sets such as the ever popular Roberts. And the much sought after 8 tracks and players. I may do a newslist too.

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