Had my wife help me carry the 1948 Philco 48-1283 upstairs from the ‘shop’ to the dining room. After fiddling with the AM radio alignment for a month, I got it (wrestled it) to a place where the stations were coming in at the right places on the dial, and I’d replaced a few resistors and capacitors that were out of spec, looked funky, or had leaked noxious goo in the first alignment attempt. I got to the point where I didn’t need to see the schematic or procedure. I was done sight reading and had gotten the piece memorized. So I put the chassis back in the cabinet, wired it all back up to the phonograph and speaker, put the knobs on and took it upstairs.
As for the barn radio, the 1949 Philco 49-1604/5, A case must be created. The dead radio came back to life when I re-soldered a broken lead to the antenna. No further alignment or servicing was necessary. Duh. New filter and coupling caps took care of its audio problems, and I’ve been playing it on the bench for the past month while I mostly have been working on the ’48 model. The case building will have to wait for summer.
So that’s a wrap. For now. Now I know how to align an AM superhetrodyne receiver.
… OK, summer is here. Here’s radio playing in the case in progress…