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Airline Miracle 62-288 restoration - Printable Version

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Airline Miracle 62-288 restoration - morzh - 12-01-2018

I bought the radio on a whim about 4 years ago in Kutztown.
Having thought about it, I probably paid too much even if it was in ideal state, but now that I got me to put it on the bench, I see that there probably ahouldves been preset knobs and there are none. The vertical slots were cleverly taped over from inside by black tape so I didn't realize there was a defect.
The lesson: have someone experienced alongside when a seller is cajoling you to part with your hard earned roubles.

The tag also says "plays" which I believe. Since it is not recapped, I am not going to check the truthfulness of this statement.

   

The tubes all test fine except the 5Y3 tube that though is functonal, tests at the questionmark. Will do for now.

I do not know the exact version: where the label used to be we now have this:

   

But I suspect they might be similar if sold in the same cabinet.

BTW the cabinet is nice and without cracks.
Maybe one day I will find a junker with the preset pegs.

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - Radioroslyn - 12-01-2018

So did you call them??  [Image: http://philcoradio.com/phorum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif]

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - KCMike - 12-01-2018

Looks like it is the model 62-288. Be interesting to what you find under the hood.
http://www.magiceyetubes.com/airline04.htm

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - morzh - 12-01-2018

Under the hood:


   
   

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - morzh - 12-02-2018

So it is the MW62-288.

And now that I have full Rider's I got from John, it is nice to have a clean legible sch to look at.

Since the recap was done by someone in 50s, as except two caps the rest were clearly replacements, I decided to not restuff them and in went the Illinois Capacitor jobs. The electrolytic, though atached as it should be, with the metal belt and a screw, was also a replacement, so in went two cans.
It's amazing how much time one saves when not doing restuffng.
The one cap I did restuff is the one on the outer side of the chassis, the antenna coil ground coupling cap.

Here it is:

   

And the rest is:

   


But then I saw this (it was taped and I smelled a rat)

   


The antenna wire was moved from the primary of the antenna transformer to the secondary. Which to me screamed the open primary. Which happened to be the case indeed.

I touched one of the primary wires of the coil and it seems to move out of the solder lug so hopefully it is simple broken wire. The coil is the paraffin potted type, those don't easily break inside, and it is my hope, plus the primary is not tuned so a turn or two missing won't affect anything much.

Here's the broken wire. I was able to unwind it a bit using heatgun and it seems to be enough to solder.
Tomorrow.

   

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - Dan Walker - 12-02-2018

I have the same cabinet but mine is a 6 volt battery set. Model 62-282; it works but I do need a vibrator which I have not been able to get because I don't know the type of vibrator I need.
 I wish you luck in getting yours to play. Here are a couple of photos of mine.
 Since the photos I have installed a new set of pushbuttons
 I really like the looks of the cabinet on these.
 Dan in Calgary

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - Arran - 12-03-2018

Mike;
  What happened to the shafts for the pushbuttons? Are they still there? Also does the mechanism use cloth strips? With regard to restuffing, I will sometimes make a new two or three section cap, either out of the old one, or out of a spare, and restuff it, just to simplify installation rather then having to find a terminals to connect the new radial lead caps to. I think I may try making a new one out of some large cardboard tubes I have.
Regards
Arran

RE: Airline Miracle 62-28x restoration - morzh - 12-03-2018

Arran, the levers (or pushbuttons) are missing. The slots are taped over. I did not know much about the radio to even notice it. And there is not much hope I will find those soon. But the radio will work fine without them.

As for the caps, with this radio it was easy: if you look at the picture, it lends itself nicely to the discrete caps as there are only two, and the first one ideally fits exactly between the points where it should be soldered, and the second one is ok too.
As for the old cap, it is one of those cardboard jobs filled with tar and potted with the hard concrete type epoxy, I dealt with those just recently and ended up discarding it. This one I am going to keep but I doubt I will put it back. This epoxy would have to be chiseled out, really hard one. I decided to do this one quick, don't want to spend a lot of time on it.

RE: Airline Miracle 62-288 restoration - morzh - 12-03-2018

As hoped, the broken wire soldered back fixed the coil.
I reconnected the antenna the way it is supposed to be and went straight to power-up via isolation transformer.
It started playing right away across the dial.
I quickly aligned it and I think I'm finished. (The alignment was enough to play but was nevertheless quite a bit off).
Tomorrow will put it back in the cabinet.

Oh....I never really checked the resistors except the candohm (in ideal shape, exactly where should be) and one more (3M which happened to be...3.03M, so....).
But I'd like quickly browse through them, just to exclude some way out of range...maybe this would explain less than HiFi quality of sound Icon_lol

Oh... the indicator tube works fine. I didn't even check if it is 6U5 as supposed to be or 6E5.
Just checked: 6U5. Got lucky, these are quite a bit more expensive than 6E5. And it seems new: very bright.

RE: Airline Miracle 62-288 restoration - KCMike - 12-03-2018

You made short out of that one. Good deal about the antenna coil.
Like Dan said I like the style of the radio. Icon_thumbup

RE: Airline Miracle 62-288 restoration - Paul Philco322 - 12-03-2018

Very nice indeed! Icon_biggrin

Paul