[Guest]

Hi everyone. New to the forum, but not to tube radios. Anyway, I'm having trouble aligning a 42-321. When I first got it, it barely, and I mean barely, picked up anything. One station was as good as it got.

I followed the alignment directions in the Riders and Beitmans with no luck. It actually doesn't pick up anything now. When following either of them, the Riders was easier, I got tone from my Heathkit SG-8 no problem. The only issue I did have was in step 2 in Riders, http://www.nostalgiaair.org/Resources/512/M0013512.htm, with the dial at 1600, and my rf gen at 1600, all I got was noise.

I have aligned several radios before, by ear so I'm still earning to use an rf gen properly, but this one and the last one have been a pain.

BTW, the rf gen was recapped and the 42-321 has been recapped also.

Since the 42-321 had picked up a station, even though it was poorly, I wouldn't think that the oscillator would be bad.

Any and all suggestions are very welcome. Everything I normally do to correct problems like this don't seem to work on this one, but though, I've never done a Phico either.

Thanks in advance everyone.

[Guest]

I was just looking over the Riders schematic, and I think that I may have missed over a joint on a capacitor. IIRC, it's capacitor 17 that I believe is connected between 7B7 and 7A8.

[FStephenMasek]

I finished one of those recently. Replacing all of that old crumbing rubber wiring was a chore! Mine also had a defective oscillator coil - there is a dead end wiring which serves as a capacitor, and it had become open. I bought a parts radio to obtain the speaker (mine was buzzing), and also removed the oscillator coil from it. The radio now works very well, picking up numerous stations, and it sounds good. Of course, I now have a spare cabinet with a nice dial glass.

[exray]

Mine also had a defective oscillator coil - there is a dead end wiring which serves as a capacitor, and it had become open..

Don'tcha hate it when an open coil winding goes open? How did you locate that?

[FStephenMasek]

It was obvious that the oscillator was not working. I could only get the strongest local station all over the band. I also used the parts radio to check all of my wiring, clipping one wire at a time out of teh parts radio after checking it with my re-wired chassis. I found no mistakes. I also re-tested the tubes.

[Radioroslyn]

If you suspect the osc is not working you can use the SG-8 as the osc. Turn the modulation off and feed a small signal in the to first grid of the mixer tube. To tune in a station the dial on the radio will tune the rf and mixer the SG-8 will act as the osc . So the osc needs to be 455kc above the frequency of the incoming (the frequency shown on the dial) and the dial should be at the incoming frequency. You can use this method on any band you just have to keep the osc at the IF frequency + the frequency of the incoming signal.
Hope this helps
Terry