[Mondial]

Greg, the easiest way to check if the RF stage is oscillating is to take the 44 tube completely out. It cannot oscillate if the tube is not plugged in. Just removing the cap wire will not necessarily prevent the RF oscillation if that's what is happening. If you hear SW when the 44 tube is in, but not when its removed then most likely the RF stage is oscillating.

But that's not the main question. The real problem is why you don't hear broadcast stations when the antenna is connected to the 36 top cap and that can only be caused by the 36 and its osc circuit.

If you feed a 260 kHz IF signal into the grid cap of the 36 you should hear it well, but not into the 44 RF grid because the RF stage is not tuned to that freq and the signal will be attenuated.