Grandmother's Radio

[Crackle]

There is a Bush VHF 70 "transistor" radio for sale on Gumtree   https://www.gumtree.com/p/other-music/be...1227821045

[Nowhere-Man]

Oh my God, Gumtree!! Honestly the time wasters I encountered on that site!!
Last year I put my boat on it. The price was a give-a-way. I was then bombarded by e-mails such as "Will it go on the canal? Does it have a keel?" Every time I answered questions, these shoppers just disappeared. I got so fed up with it I decided to fix the boat up and keep it for myself. Now it looks so nice a lady in the sshop says she'd happily rent it.
The only site I found not too bad was Ali Express.

[Nowhere-Man]

I've been going over the circuit of my ECC85. Simplified, there's a triode RF amplifier and a triode oscillator. The IF is 10.7 megahertz. Of interest to me was the oscillator variometer. The primary L5 is one end at chassis potential. L6 leads to chassis via 33 K with the other end at the grid of the oscillator triode. This is if I follow it correctly. The Saalburg shows a full photo schematic of this FM double triode circuit. As we know so far I only have FM and the FM tuning is now ganged with the moving vane capacitor. Originally it was not and had been disabled by someone. Of course, now I know exactly what's happening as the dial chord controls the FM slugs yet the moving vane tuner is dead. As of yet I am not sure how to test the ECC85 anode voltages as these are not on the PCB boards. Of course I know they are OK. I am not far off being able to work out much of this set by circuit familiarity but 2 tuner systems was new to me. I'm glad I waited because when I messed with it months ago, I had insufficient knowledge. And I recall R355 gave me such a kick via C60's charge, I shot across my boat like a scalded cat. Bloody dangerous hobby when you're self taught. Why did I get that shock? Well HT feed to R35 was disconnected so C60 retained it's full 230 odd volts. That dropped when I touched it and acted as a "voltage divider".