[criageek]

I took a few days away from the Philco to work on restoring the Jackson 106 signal generator I picked up but now I'm back to working on the Philco.  I don't know what has changed since the last time I worked on it, but now I can receive FM signals by tuning the tuning condenser, without the signal generator acting as a local oscillator.  It's another step forward, but the stations I receive are still weak and distorted.  I've re-done the FM alignment and tried to set the oscillator so that I get stations at the proper place on the dial.  But when I set it where I think it's right, many of the stations I receive are in the right place, but I also receive stations at the wrong end of the dial.  For instance, I can get 104.5 basically where it should be on the dial, but then I tune up to around 105.5 or 106 and I receive a station that's supposed to be at the other end of the dial, around 88.  So, there's still a lot of work to do.  If any of this triggers some ideas let me know!

I've been working with my SDR (software defined radio) more and I'm getting more comfortable with it.  I don't have the proper SMA adapters yet so I just created a small probe from a piece of wire and made a small coil at the end.

   

The software for these things allows you to use it as a spectrum analyzer.  By inserting the coil near the local oscillator I can see it on the spectrum analyzer display.  It works beautifully for AM.  But for FM it changes the oscillator frequency when I place the coil near the FM local oscillator coil.

   

Still, I can see what I think is the local oscillator.  It's about where I would expect it to be and moves when I tune the radio.  But I also see a signal that's about the same strength as what I think is the local oscillator, but it moves in the opposite direction!  So when I tune up the dial, this signal changes to a lower frequency...odd.

My thinking is that the local oscillator is running, but it's weak.  I'll keep researching.  Thanks for any and all help!

Rich