Ever Ready Sky Tourer

[Mike Watterson]

I got one of these this week. A huge improvement in capacitor quality in just 3 years (1963 vs 1960 Sky Baron).
The AF117 are all good and since the issue is excessive tin plate on the inside of the can resulting in tin whiskers in the gel, they likely will remain OK.
The Car switch catch just needed cleaning. I have a PP7 replica already using 6 off AAA cells, a far better solution than a PP3. The R&TVS (1964-65 volume) seems better than the Trader sheet.

The glue had failed on both the LW & MW ferrite rod coils. Good reception once glued in the original locations with two dabs of UHU.

Case was very dirty and handle bent. Slight crack in tuning scale.

However the car kit mode doesn't seem to receive anything other than noise with a 600mm wire. Much quieter when fed with a signal generator. So the DC, speaker and aerial switching are working. The pair of 14V wheat grain / pea bulbs still work in Car mode. I'm puzzled. Perhaps I need to run it from a battery rather than bench PSU and isolate from mains earth?

Anyone ever aligned the Car mode on one of these?

[Mike Watterson]

I've put it back together. While the R&TVS has more information, the Trader sheet explains WHERE 1400 KHz and 250KHz are on the scale. 176.5 is to the left of 17 (1500m/200kHz is just to the left of 15) and 600 KHz is "5", those two are obvious. The 1400 kHz point is the extra dot to the left of "2", which is 1500 kHz. The 250Khz is just to the left of RTE Radio1 on the | to the right of 13.

I'll not worry about the car mode. I must check the 5 pins compared to the earlier Ever Ready Car Portable, though the mounting kits are obviously totally incompatible, the sockets being at right angles.
The performance is good despite only having one IF amp. I'm not sure about the logic of having the more expensive RF amp circuit instead which needs two extra RF transformers, two extra trimmers and an extra gang on the tuning capacitor. While valve superhets manage fine with one IF amp, the IFTs are both higher Q (due to high input impedance of next stage) and double tuned. Hence even a battery valve radio on 45V can have better sensitivity and selectivity than the usual six transistor radio where one is audio preamp and two are the push pull output.

[Crackle]

So you getting into transistors now then Michael.
They are fun and take up far less room, tomorrows antique radios.

Mike

[Mike Watterson]

I've always had some vintage/antique transistor sets.
25 years = Classic.
50 years = Vintage (for objects, not drinks).

I have:
Sky Leader 1958
Sky Master 1964
Ever Ready Skyleader 6800: approx 1982
Ever Ready Skytime 6801: approx 1982
Hacker Sovereign RP18 1964
Hacker Sovereign II RP25a
BEREC Demon
Vidor Gem 1958
Decca TT33: 1959
Ever Ready Car Portable: 1960
Ever Reay Sky Baron: 1960
Decca TP60: 1961
GEC BC505: 1961 or 1962
Bush TR130 (with Lux button): 1965
Challenge R-66: about 1964
Koyo KTR-1661: approx 1965, a fantastic set with 3 x VHF bands, LW, MW, 3 x SW
Fidelity RAD23: about 1973. Two, one from my mother-in-law and one from my aunt
Roberts R600: 1968-1973
Roberts R700
I have a bunch of other 1960s to 1980s transistor radios, various clock radios (most mains, but one mechanical / electric battery and two windup). Best 1980s model is the Sony ICF2001D
I have also more modern transistor sets. The VR500, VX5R and FT817ND are now obsolete but high resale value. Like the FT101ZD mk III (which is all transistor on receive) and ICF2001D they will be Classics.
The two DAB sets and and the two World Band AM/FM DSP (not SDR) radios I doubt will be ever regarded as very collectable. They are all junk now. The Panasonic "walkman style" model with AM/FM radio I have is more likely to be collectable.

I've no idea how many transistor radios I have and how many are modern, how many are more than 25 or more than 50 years old. Only some are on the Radio Museum.