Hallicrafters SX-111 Faceplate...

I'm about to refinish the faceplate of a Hallicrafters SX-111 I'm restoring. I was hoping to retain as much of the original petina as possible, but there's way too much rust to allow me to sleep at night :-) This radio sat in a damp place many years. The electrical restoration wasn't difficult, but I want it to look good as well. I was able to locate the last 3 packs of Datamark white lettering in the new company owner's warehouse, so I'm sanding it down and starting over. 

Along with white, 1/8" tall lettering, there's a 1/16" wide white pinstripe all the way around the faceplate. I have a custom pin striping person that used to do work on my custom motorcycles, I'm going to try and talk him into that for me :-) Here's pics of the horrible face condition, just before sanding, filling, and priming work starts...

Dave WB4IUY 

Wb4iuy.net

Portable Shortwave Antenna...

 

I stumbled upon this in a batch of goodies I just got. Had not seen one in years. Even has the little antenna coupler still attached and working :-)

This neat little antenna will be handy when travelling, vacation, overnight fishing trips, etc. Stretch it out, slip the coupler over the collapsed antenna, and you're in business! Someone mentioned something similar is available from C-Crane.

Dave WB4IUY

WB4IUY.net

Cleaning Vacuum Tube Pins and Sockets

This is a short video explaining how I clean tube pins and sockets. While restoring and/or repairing tube rigs, I've found dirty/bent tube pins and sockets to be one of the leading causes of receiver noise and intermittent operations. 

 Dave WB4IUY

http://www.WB4IUY.net

 

Repairing a Hallicrafters SX-111 Knob

 There was a piece broken out of the edge of the knob. Considering the age of this radio from the early 60's, I decided to try to repair it.

 

I made a little form to follow along the inner curve of the knob with tape. A small bit of 5-minute epoxy was built up in this area and allowed to harden over night.

 

I removed the tape, and sanded the outer curve and edge of the knob to match. Using a Dremel tool with a cut-off disc and a jewelers file, I replicated the grooves in the outer surface. After cleaning, it's now ready for a little touch up color to match, once I get that mixed.

 

  

Dave WB4IUY

http://www.WB4IUY.net

Heathkit HW-32A, Post Restoration

 These are such cool little monoband radios! I've had all of them...the -12 on 75m, the -22 on 40m, and the -32 on 20m. They'll do around 100w output, are fairly compact, and have a great receiver. They are phone only, but with selectable sideband, I'm sure a little work could easily drop these in the digital segment of the band for those modes. This unit was pretty clean, but I washed the PCB and cleaned it up, anyway. The tube sockets and tube pins got cleaned, a shorted tube was replaced, caps replaced, some resistors were replaced, an assembly issue with the rear power connector was corrected, and the receiver was DEAD. I found a damaged I.F. transformer, repaired a burned winding, and it came alive. An alignment was performed to get her at peak performance. Wow, amazing performance from a 60 year old radio. Here's a video and a few pics... 

Dave WB4IUY

http://www.WB4IUY.net