[Electrothaumaturgist]

Was able to play with the 42-400 over the weekend, and piqued the SW1 and 2 bands, bringing in more stations. Rolled up and down the FM dial (like I have 100 times before with complete silence through the speaker), and thought I heard a faint station. Zoned in on it and pulled it in. Actually pulled in quite a few stations, but topped out around 99-101 MHz, or thereabouts. Had to back the FM IF adjusters way out, and adjust the compensators. I had sleeved the fm antenna wires going up to the cabinet during recap, keeping the original antenna wire and crumbling orange insulation going around the backside of the cabinet. Had the two antenna wires coming off the chassis running parallel to each other to the cabinet, but when I twisted these together going up, my signal strength and volume dramatically improved, and found the more I fooled with the antenna, the better it got. She pulls a good dozen stations now, with varying intensity, 3 or 4 being prominent: 24 hour news talk, country, and a hard rock station. Oh, lest we not forget ESPN, of course. ( It's kind of tricky to get the tuner to the signal peak, though. It was drifting slightly the first 2 hours, but seems to have stabilized. a little more tweaking, I suppose). Now SW1 is suffering with bleed over from FM, but I think I can find a happy medium between the two. Perhaps if I modify the existing antenna, the signal will improve further, then I can re tune the shortwave. This radio probably hasn't received FM signals since they went to the new style FM in what, 1945? 68 years? That to me is nothing short of a miracle! The first song she played was Hearts' "Crazy On You". I never really appreciated what a wonderful rich tone Philco's possess- now that she can play music instead of talk radio. Any ideas on an FM antenna, and tuning "tricks"? Thanks for lending your ears. She's won me over!