01-13-2018, 11:17 AM
yesterday i muddled through all my vintage domino caps to lay them out in catagories so i can bag and tag them.
i discovered this was a good distraction beacause i have about 12 different pico farad sizes. i thought i only had about 3 or four.
these come from the 20$ extra large tote i bought at a flea market along with a 60$ somewhat inoperative S38-d hallicrafters which motivated me into ultimatly fixing my grand dads Philco.
on my s53-a on the T10 IF , i have two 200pf caps installed to replace the old mica caps.
my volume when i am on a station is rather weak., my volume knob during this test was at max but by ear feels like 50 or 60%.
i touched various caps across the pri and secondary experimenting with what size would raise the volume ultimatly increasing the capacitance.
i have dozens of 1500pf, 22pf, 10pf and a couple 200pf, a few 50pf and more domino caps. i am actually considering building myself a Decade Cap and Decade resistnace box.
i knew earlier that 100pf across the coils of the IF was not doing the trick a few days ago,, and during that time a few days ago i added an additional 100pf across each coil or inductor or whatever we would classify it as...
yesterday i bridged an addtional 10pf across one of the coils and my volume of a particular local station increased slightly with the knob on max.
I added another 10pf and volume came up more.
keep in mind i am just touching these caps by hand.
i start over with a 22pf and volume comes up more.
so......... i take 2) 20pf caps parallel them together and touch 40 more pf across my 200pf i have soldered in to now total 240 pf.
volume came up even more.
i twisted on another 10pf to my two 20's.
i now parallel 50pf with the 200pf and volume came up.
so i bridge 3) 20pf caps across the 200pf and volume still came up.
so i bridge 4) 20pf caps across the 200pf and volume started to go DOWN.
as my slugs are postioned right now with both slugs bottomed out on T10, i assume that the set is trying to tell me more information.
in order to enable me to back off on the slugs CCW, and if this is an inductive reactive circuit,,, XL=2piFL then in order to reduct inductance (since now i am at max), it seems reasonable i would install 250 or 240"ish" pf caps then re peak this IF. 260pf works best now with the slugs bottomed out.
i am thinking doing dual 240 or so pf caps would allow me to turn my slugs ccw.
on the other side of the fence i want to mention something that has me second guessing my assumptions.
if i were to just simply ignore all this bla bla about inserting experimental cap and just discuss "what the set does with i open the tuning cap, here are my results....
when i inject 455kc and tuning caps open, with max volume the noise out of the speaker is inbearable at max.
I know i am wrong before i say what i am about to say but............... with only 200pf across the T10 if, i would expect that the signal generator to be low volume as if i were on a local broadcast station yet it is way loud.
why is it with 200pf caps on my T10 pri and sec, i have low vol condition on am stations yet too loud when the sig gen is inserted?
i discovered this was a good distraction beacause i have about 12 different pico farad sizes. i thought i only had about 3 or four.
these come from the 20$ extra large tote i bought at a flea market along with a 60$ somewhat inoperative S38-d hallicrafters which motivated me into ultimatly fixing my grand dads Philco.
on my s53-a on the T10 IF , i have two 200pf caps installed to replace the old mica caps.
my volume when i am on a station is rather weak., my volume knob during this test was at max but by ear feels like 50 or 60%.
i touched various caps across the pri and secondary experimenting with what size would raise the volume ultimatly increasing the capacitance.
i have dozens of 1500pf, 22pf, 10pf and a couple 200pf, a few 50pf and more domino caps. i am actually considering building myself a Decade Cap and Decade resistnace box.
i knew earlier that 100pf across the coils of the IF was not doing the trick a few days ago,, and during that time a few days ago i added an additional 100pf across each coil or inductor or whatever we would classify it as...
yesterday i bridged an addtional 10pf across one of the coils and my volume of a particular local station increased slightly with the knob on max.
I added another 10pf and volume came up more.
keep in mind i am just touching these caps by hand.
i start over with a 22pf and volume comes up more.
so......... i take 2) 20pf caps parallel them together and touch 40 more pf across my 200pf i have soldered in to now total 240 pf.
volume came up even more.
i twisted on another 10pf to my two 20's.
i now parallel 50pf with the 200pf and volume came up.
so i bridge 3) 20pf caps across the 200pf and volume still came up.
so i bridge 4) 20pf caps across the 200pf and volume started to go DOWN.
as my slugs are postioned right now with both slugs bottomed out on T10, i assume that the set is trying to tell me more information.
in order to enable me to back off on the slugs CCW, and if this is an inductive reactive circuit,,, XL=2piFL then in order to reduct inductance (since now i am at max), it seems reasonable i would install 250 or 240"ish" pf caps then re peak this IF. 260pf works best now with the slugs bottomed out.
i am thinking doing dual 240 or so pf caps would allow me to turn my slugs ccw.
on the other side of the fence i want to mention something that has me second guessing my assumptions.
if i were to just simply ignore all this bla bla about inserting experimental cap and just discuss "what the set does with i open the tuning cap, here are my results....
when i inject 455kc and tuning caps open, with max volume the noise out of the speaker is inbearable at max.
I know i am wrong before i say what i am about to say but............... with only 200pf across the T10 if, i would expect that the signal generator to be low volume as if i were on a local broadcast station yet it is way loud.
why is it with 200pf caps on my T10 pri and sec, i have low vol condition on am stations yet too loud when the sig gen is inserted?