Airline 62-425 1930 | |
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I've finished the restoration. What a job, but I think it turned out real nice! However I need to find some grill cloth in tan, more like the origional. | |
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This Wards Airline is a smaller radio with a great art deco style. It measures 10 1/2"W x 6"D x 7 1/4"H. It's a super heterodyne and uses tubes 6A7 mixer/oscillator, 78 IF, 75 detector, 41 audio and 5Z4 rectifier. | |
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These are some pictures of the radio as I purchased it. What a paint job! This "flower power" case turned out to be a real project. | |
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Before 
After | |
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| Here's what it looked like after I first stripped it. |
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 | And a shot after I stained it. Because after stripping there was some green paint that I just couldn't get out of the wood grain I used a walnut toned lacquer rather than stain. I think it covered better on this job. |
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Actually the first thing I did was to recapped it. I had the caps on hand and there's only 7 so it went real fast. However, when I fired it up it didn't play real well. Some distortion and the volumn control did't work right. I took some voltage readings and they were low so I started looking to see what was worng. |
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As it turned out some service shop tried to replaced the filter caps at some point. 1st they didn't disconnect the old ones, (wires circled lead to the top where the old paper tube is located). What if a cap was shorted? And 2nd, they wired C10 in wrong. This particular double cap doesn't have a common ground as most do. It uses a common positive and separate negatives of which only one goes to ground. I confirmed this by checking the power supply diagram in my Mallory Radio Service Encyclopedia which shows a diagram of the cap. Ya gotta love those old service books! After rewiring, the radio played much better. I guess it hasn't sounded so good in years! I hope the previous owner didn't pay too much for the bad repair. |
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Well, after putting it altogether, with some new grill cloth, there it is. Back to life and good as new. What a tough road this radio has been down. But now it's playing good and joins my other radios playing the sweet sound of music. Just as this radio was originally made to do. - Mike |