[Raleigh]

Yup, I moved to North Carolina from St. Paul after the winter of 1983-84, which was the longest, nastiest winter I'd ever experienced. '76-'77 might have been close. We moved precisely to get away from the cold. I loved the Twin Cities, so it took me years to decide to move, but that year was so awful that we finally decided to do it.

I re-read the section of Marcus & Levy on the RF section, chapter 16. If you've gotten the copy you ordered you might want to read that. Some of the problems they describe sound similar to yours.

There is a compensator, 1C, on the schematic that goes across part of the broadcast loop antenna. I don't see any reference to it in the alignment instructions. It might be fun to play with it a little to see if it has an impact on your problem. Marcus & Levy mention a wave trap for ship-to shore communications that long ago were on 455 KHz. They interfered with reception of superhet receivers if not filtered out at the antenna stage. Maybe that's all it is, and it's not really necessary these days.

You might be onto something with the tube socket, especially since the oscillation goes away when you press on it. The loctal socket for the 7J7 converter on my 40-150 is also cracked, but I don't have any negative results from it. I ordered a replacement socket from either Radio Daze or Antique Electronics Supply (don't remember which.) The socket and the screw holes were oriented 90 degrees differently from the Philco socket, so I'd have had to re-orient all the wiring to use the original rivet holes, or else I'd need to drill 2 new holes and right angles to the originals. In the end, I didn't do anything, but have still got the socket in case I ever need it.

Do you have a spare RF tube, 1232? I don't know anything that suggests it's bad, but since the RF section could be implicated it's worth a try if you have a spare. I doubt it's worth ordering one unless you have a better idea that it's bad, though.