Electronics 10

Alignment was pretty straight forward and it was WAY out of alignment. The Heathkit IM-28 VTVM I just got from eBay really came in handy for the alignment. The only thing I could just barely receive before alignment was WKRS 1220 located right here in Waukegan. It aligned up very nicely. The only slight problem I had was with the Osc padders. The entire padder cap has a hairline crack running through it and you can tell when trying to adjust it. It was very difficult to get it tuned with the crack but with patience I was able to get it set. Once aligned I was able to get most BCB stations and even an Indiana and Canadian station around 9Mhz, in my basement, with just a little adhock vertical and no ground! I was getting pretty excited. Next I need to do the case and put up a long wire antenna. One thing I did notice during alignment was that when not using an isolation transformer the tubes would start lighting up when I connected the test equipment grounds, even with the unit turned off. This makes sense since it is the return side of the line that gets switched with the on-off switch. In retrospect, if I ever do another one of these AC/DC models I will change the switch to the hot side of the AC line. This one is staying the way it is.

Here's the completed unit. I wire brushed most of the old paint off. I discovered that it had been repainted once already. Whomever repainted it just painted right over any existing rust spots. There was a lot of rust just under the one coat of paint. Since I don't know how to silk screen the words back on I taped over the words. It's really the only flaw with the rebuild. I got all the rust off, primed it, and then put on two coats of black paint. It came out pretty good. With the knobs washed up it really looked great. I put up the long wire antenna and setup a ground through a ground rod into the ground. I connected up the antenna and the ground and it works Great! I'm very surprised at how sensitive it is. The selectivity isn't real good but I'm very happy with the operation. I'm also very surprised at how quite it is. Compared to the Heathkit SW7800 this receiver is very quiet. I actually like this Hallicrafters better than the Heathkit. I've been considering making a pre-selector as one of my next projects. I get a lot of imaging and overloading with local BCB stations. I'm very happy with it though. Spent one night listening to a Taiwan station for about an hour. Probably should have logged it and sent for a QSL card.


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