[Arran]

 That set has a very amusing gimmick, from the front it looks like it has a 12 inch speaker, but from the rear it looks like they bolted an 8'' speaker to a metal cone. I have no doubt that it is probably a decent performing set, tuned RF amplifier stage, and separate oscillator and mixer tubes which should help with shortwave performance. It's too bad that they decided to pull the tube stuffing scam in the rear end by using a 6F5 and a 6H6 rather then a 6Q7. Whilst the two diodes in the 6H6 seem to have their cathodes wired separately I doubt whether this would have much advantage in performance. In a Philco they would have used a 6Q7 and used push-pull outputs with a screen grid inversion setup, or because they didn't use magic eyes maybe even a phase inverter for the ninth tube.
  The one thing that I do not find appealing is that cabinet, it's as plain as a lower end Philco, which is disappointing for a nine tube set. Regarding the grill cloth on the fleabay Airline, the pattern looks rather blond for the era, I wonder if it's the correct cloth but sun bleached or if someone in the late 1940s or early 50s decided to change it out to make it more modern?
Regards
Arran