I MAKE CARDBOARD MULTI-SECTION CAPACITORS SPECIFICALLY FOR THES-38
SERIES OF SETS. SEE MY WEBSITE.


CHECK MY WEBSITE: www.dialcover.com
Bill Turner, excuse caps, short answers, stroke.
Business SASE, each order a copy of The Pocket Resource Guide.

....... My guess is alignment, or dirty bandswitch contacts (spray them with
Deox-It, don't waste your time with Rat Shack tuner cleaner).
Good luck, Mike K.


I just reworked an S-38C for a co-worker. Along with the dirty switch
contacts several of the grounds to the chassis had corroded and needed to be
cleaned up. The wipers on the tuning caps needed attention too. My shop
antenna is a 35ft wire at the apex of the garage roof. With that hooked up
the little guy does great on shortwave broadcast, 75mtr AM etc. With no
antenna it gets all the local stations.

EdZ
San Diego

THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE FELLOWS SET THAT HE SAYS IS
"JUST A AA5". I WISH ALL THE AA5 WERE AS GOOD AS MY S-38-A-B-C-D-E AND
SR-75. SOME OF THEM TOOK A LITTLE WORK BUT THEY COULD HARDLY BE
CONSIDERED AS ORDINARY.


CHECK MY WEBSITE: www.dialcover.com
Bill Turner, excuse caps, short answers, stroke.
Business SASE, each order a copy of The Pocket Resource Guide.

THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE FELLOWS SET THAT HE SAYS IS
"JUST A AA5". I WISH ALL THE AA5 WERE AS GOOD AS MY S-38-A-B-C-D- BRBR

Look around the flat thing plugged into the computer thingy with all the
buttons, for one called "caps lock," and push it once.

Practice with it and see how it works.

Don

Dbowey wrote:

THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE FELLOWS SET THAT HE SAYS IS
"JUST A AA5". I WISH ALL THE AA5 WERE AS GOOD AS MY S-38-A-B-C-D- BRBR

Look around the flat thing plugged into the computer thingy with all the
buttons, for one called "caps lock," and push it once.

Practice with it and see how it works.

If you'll read his sig, you'll find an explanation of the
all-caps post. I'll quote his sig here, so that you don't
have to rummage back through the thread.

: CHECK MY WEBSITE: www.dialcover.com
: Bill Turner, excuse caps, short answers, stroke.
: Business SASE, each order a copy of The Pocket Resource Guide.

If you ever suffer some sort of physical impairment, you may find
yourself wishing that people were a bit more accommodating towards
you.

--
Mike Andrews

Tired old sysadmin

Mike posted:
Dbowey wrote:

THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE FELLOWS SET THAT HE SAYS IS
"JUST A AA5". I WISH ALL THE AA5 WERE AS GOOD AS MY S-38-A-B-C-D-


Look around the flat thing plugged into the computer thingy with all the
buttons, for one called "caps lock," and push it once.

Practice with it and see how it works.

If you'll read his sig, you'll find an explanation of the
all-caps post. I'll quote his sig here, so that you don't
have to rummage back through the thread.

: CHECK MY WEBSITE: www.dialcover.com
: Bill Turner, excuse caps, short answers, stroke.
: Business SASE, each order a copy of The Pocket Resource Guide.

If you ever suffer some sort of physical impairment, you may find
yourself wishing that people were a bit more accommodating towards
you.


I didn't miss seeing the end-tag. Many people who post have one or more
infirmaties, and draw attention to it only when it is necessary. This post got
my attention because it used keystrokes that require the use of the shift key
(not shift lock key), indicating that its use was optional, regardless of the
comment in the end-tag.

Don

Dbowey wrote:


I didn't miss seeing the end-tag. Many people who post have one or more
infirmaties, and draw attention to it only when it is necessary. This post got
my attention because it used keystrokes that require the use of the shift key
(not shift lock key), indicating that its use was optional, regardless of the
comment in the end-tag.

Now that you have a stone clad reason for messing with the guy, consider
this:

How were you harmed by his all caps message?

Suppose it added 10 minutes to the length of time it took for him to
compose the message just to add in the "optional shifts?" Ever watch
a disabled person use a mouth paddle to work a keyboard?

Suppose it made him feel nice in a kind of Model 15 teletype sort of
way to use all caps?

Either way, how were you harmed?

Give the guy a break. Maybe one day you will need us to give you one.

-Chuck

Chuck Harris wrote to Dbowey:
Now that you have a stone clad reason for messing with the guy, consider
this:

Without regard to all that (I don't have a dog in this fight, and you make a
good case) it's just as easy to leave the keyboard in lower case for all,
and easier to read, to boot.

--
John Miller
Email address: domain, n4vu.com; username, jsm

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-Benjamin Franklin

r (Mike Knudsen) wrote in message ...
In article ,
writes:

Hello Chris,I think you should examine the RF coil assy. and check for
open circuit in BC input...think about this, If this receiver had an
external antenna connected and was sitting there on the BC
band,turned off,and a lightning charge came along it would most likely
burn out the BC RF coil,making it extremely weak on that band.

This is good advice -- check that primary.
I'd like to add that many antenna primaries get blown out because someone
discovers that a ground makes a pretty good antenna -- because it's using the
hot side of the house power wiring as an antenna. If your line bypass caps are
leaky, you'll get excess AC current thrut he antenna to ground -- I've seen
sparks thrown, not big fat ones, jsut enugh to let you know it isn't good for
the coil.

And if you have a fancy antenna system with a baluyn coil, then for 60 cycle
AC, the "hot" antenna lead is as good as ground, so be sure to hook up the
ground side first. Which is just hte opposite of what PL-259 coax connectors
do ,,,
--Mike K.

Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I have since replaced all but one of
the wax caps and lamentably, the AM band is totally shot now. All I
get are two very strong stations and then WMAL, which I used to get
fine, is all but dead (it usually comes in at 630 AM, but now for some
reason it is tuning in at 500 and very very faint...) I'm a total
novice at this but I guess it doesn't take a novice to realize that
this thing is horribly out of alignment. I am really going to need to
teach myself how to do an alignment. I just hope I don't electrocute
myself! ;-) Does replacing capacitors necessarily throw a radio's
alignment completely out of whack like this?

I hope I used the right kinds of capacitors to replace the old wax
caps. Although I am positive I ordered the right values (voltage, mmf,
etc.) and triple checked everything when I replaced the old ones, I
hope I got the right type of materials. I got mica caps from Mouser
and AES when available, but there was one caps that I got that is a
"polyester film" capacitor.

Also a question about tolerances -- how important is it to get a
capacitor with the exact tolerance? When I'm looking up part numbers,
sometimes a capacitor won't list any tolerance at all; other times, a
tolerance is listed (Say, 10%) and that's the only one they have with
the voltage/farad spec that I need, but the radio's parts list
requires a 5%. Will performance/safety be affected adversely if I go
with a capacitor with a 10% tolerance instead of the required 5% ?
Maybe it's a silly question, but it's hard to find some of these
tolerances, at least in my experience.

Thanks for putting up with these questions.

-chris

Chris Kilmer wrote:
r (Mike Knudsen) wrote in message ...

In article ,
writes:


Hello Chris,I think you should examine the RF coil assy. and check for
open circuit in BC input...think about this, If this receiver had an
external antenna connected and was sitting there on the BC
band,turned off,and a lightning charge came along it would most likely
burn out the BC RF coil,making it extremely weak on that band.

This is good advice -- check that primary.
I'd like to add that many antenna primaries get blown out because someone
discovers that a ground makes a pretty good antenna -- because it's using the
hot side of the house power wiring as an antenna. If your line bypass caps are
leaky, you'll get excess AC current thrut he antenna to ground -- I've seen
sparks thrown, not big fat ones, jsut enugh to let you know it isn't good for
the coil.

And if you have a fancy antenna system with a baluyn coil, then for 60 cycle
AC, the "hot" antenna lead is as good as ground, so be sure to hook up the
ground side first. Which is just hte opposite of what PL-259 coax connectors
do ,,,
--Mike K.

Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.


Thanks everyone for the advice. I have since replaced all but one of
the wax caps and lamentably, the AM band is totally shot now. All I
get are two very strong stations and then WMAL, which I used to get
fine, is all but dead (it usually comes in at 630 AM, but now for some
reason it is tuning in at 500 and very very faint...) I'm a total
novice at this but I guess it doesn't take a novice to realize that
this thing is horribly out of alignment. I am really going to need to
teach myself how to do an alignment. I just hope I don't electrocute
myself! ;-) Does replacing capacitors necessarily throw a radio's
alignment completely out of whack like this?

I hope I used the right kinds of capacitors to replace the old wax
caps. Although I am positive I ordered the right values (voltage, mmf,
etc.) and triple checked everything when I replaced the old ones, I
hope I got the right type of materials. I got mica caps from Mouser
and AES when available, but there was one caps that I got that is a
"polyester film" capacitor.

Also a question about tolerances -- how important is it to get a
capacitor with the exact tolerance? When I'm looking up part numbers,
sometimes a capacitor won't list any tolerance at all; other times, a
tolerance is listed (Say, 10%) and that's the only one they have with
the voltage/farad spec that I need, but the radio's parts list
requires a 5%. Will performance/safety be affected adversely if I go
with a capacitor with a 10% tolerance instead of the required 5% ?
Maybe it's a silly question, but it's hard to find some of these
tolerances, at least in my experience.

Thanks for putting up with these questions.

-chris


Questions are never silly. Well, maybe sometimes :-) The variances
between say an .05 and a .047 are nil. You could recap the whole darn
radio with .01 or .02 and rarely notice a difference.

You're looking for the fly on the elephant's butt while ignoring that
he's in the room (Yeah, I heard that from Bill Maher). I'm going to
give you credit for having chosen the correct value caps and putting
them in the right place but CHECK THAT ANTENNA COIL and CHECK THOSE
TUBES if you haven't done so already.
Has anyone mentioned that maybe you should check the antenna coil for
continuity? If not, I'd recommend checking the antenna coil. Checking
th antenna coil would be a good idea. Maybe it has a problem and
checking it would allow you to confirm or refute that common problem.
Schematics are on nostalgiaair.com and BAMA. Get dirty with the radio,
don't try to rationalize it. Check the antenna coil or better still
check your own work and then CHECK THE ANTENNA COIL.

-BM