Valentine's gift (or is it a shameless trick?)
 

Yesterday I picked up a Philco F4626M Miss America. My wife is out of town for a couple of days and we'll miss Valentine's Day together. To smooth the path for this new acquisition, I told her that this TV is a gift. Since it's hers, not mine, she's welcome to sell it if she thinks we don't have room, although it would look great alongside her Mid-Century Modern things. All I want is a chance to restore it and take photos for an article before she gets rid of it. I also found a Philco ad with the 1958 Miss America next to the TV in her gown and tiara.

Phil Nelson

http://antiqueradio.org/art/temp/PhilcoMissAmerica.jpg

very nice looking :yes:

Hopefully when she sees it, she will think it's too nice to get rid of. That one is on my short list of sets I'd like to have.

Nice set! Also a very nice shameless trick! :D
Hmmmm, thinking my wife might like a TNP Sharp for Valentines Day .
jr

1. Butter her up a little, tell her that when you heard it was a Miss America you immediately thought of her.

2. Point out that that big screen will be much easier on her beautiful eyes that look like a deep blue? lake on a moonlit night. (do NOT tell her it'll help reduce her crows feet!!)

3. Tell her you were going to get her a Vacuum Cleaner but thought this was better.

4. Post the set for sale in the Classifieds section. :lmao:

If all else fails hide a piece of jewelry inside the set and tell her the guy would only sell it as a package deal with the tv.

Or you can do your Jackie Gleason impression and tell her "I'm king of the castle and youre nothing....what I say goes!:D ...come to think of it,that usually didn't work too well for Ralph...

Nice, somewhat fancy for a set of that era.

Is it the CRT that is shattered, or just the cover glass? Sure hope you can fix it, since the rest of the set looks pristine.

Reflection of tripod?
jr

It's a tripod. It thought I was being clever by throwing a big black dropcloth on the floor to reduce glare. You can see part of the cloth below the TV. If I had slid it back about six feet, it would have worked better. Oh well, it wasn't a serious photo shoot, just a quick snapshot to email to my wife. She's happy with the deal, by the way.

Today I replaced the electrolytics in the cans and powered it up. Plenty of light on the screen and the audio's fine. Horizontal deflection's OK, but vertical only fills half the screen. Vertical tubes are good. I see about half a dozen bumblebees on the sweep board. Those will be the next to go!

Phil Nelson

Very interesting. I think possibly it's wearing an evening dress. :scratch2:

Your Black Panther has been getting quite the workout lately. ;)

Kevin

Actually, Phil, I'm guessing that you've been married as long as I have, and that your wife will find your "shameless trick" to be endearing. I'm in a similar situation--tomorrow I pick up 3 radios. One is a "gift," the second goes in my study and I pretend that it's been there for years, and the third stays hidden in the garage until the next time my wife goes to visit her sister.

Reminds me of an old Mad Magizine article that had various cartoons describing situations "You know you've been married a long time when".. "Both of you think that a replacement hose for the vacuum cleaner is a great anniversary gift" and the cartoon shows the couple in a happy embrace with the hose by their side...

As for myself, I've yet to step into the beartrap of love...

"Honey, shouldn't we go out and get a flatscreen that would fit in that cabinet if you removed the CRT and the tuner section?" :scratch2: :D

We'll want to see pix of that TV in it's natural environment, alongside her Mid-Century Modern things, when you have it all fixed up. :thmbsp:

Or, "Honey, we're giving each other snow tires for Christmas."

That TV is the epitome of mid-century modern...she HAS to love it!!

Just remember, the more often you buy things while she's away the less likely she is to go and leave you alone. :yes:

A few caps later . . . .

http://antiqueradio.org/art/temp/Phi...FirstImage.jpg

Even with a brightener, this CRT's about as weak as you can get and still make any sort of picture. The rest of the project should be straightforward. This chassis is a snap to work on compared to the behemoth DuMont I've been rassling around recently. And unlike a Predicta, the boards are easily accessible from underneath!

Can't spend any more time on it this morning. Gotta pick up my wife at the airport this afternoon. It will be fun to show it as a sorta-working set, not a pretty (but lifeless) decoration.

Phil Nelson

P.S. Ignore all the glare. If I want to take nice screen photos, I'll have to hang a big black dropcloth behind the camera, as well as cover the floor.

Love it!!

So....how did the reception go? Did she like it?

She likes it a lot. I've finished recapping except for one .15mfd/1KV cap (who has that sort of thing lying around?).

I found three of these black guys on the video board. Yet another flavor of molded paper cap with plastic skin, I guess. The video really perked up after I replaced 'em, anyhow.

http://antiqueradio.org/art/temp/Mol...PCBoardCap.jpg

Phil Nelson

Miss America's almost ready to be seen in public, except for a faint vertical drive line in the place where those usually appear. (Look just to the right of Mickey Rourke's forehead).

http://antiqueradio.org/art/PhilcoF4626MDriveLine.jpg

From older sets, I'm used to having a drive adjuster (or something) you can tweak, but this TV has few adjusters.

Ideas? Horizontal stability is great, so there is no other reason to mess with horizontal circuits.

The schematic is at:

http://antiqueradio.org/art/temp/Phi...MSchematic.jpg

Regards,

Phil Nelson

In my marriage, I'm afraid my wife would see right through it, and be VERY upset. But it's a cool idea!

Charles

My wife's a bigger collector than I am, and crazy about 1950s stuff. This is a welcome change from stodgy old DuMonts. I don't think I could use the trick more than once, though. And I have already identified a less interesting TV to sell to make room for this one.

Phil Nelson

I added a drive control to my CTC-9, using hints from the CTC-7 schematic. It worked fine, maybe you coul add the components from the 7's schematic? It's on the ETF site, page 13 of the manual.

Phil, happy she likes it! Handsome TV with a great picture. Need to get my wife in that kind of mode :yes:
Kevin

That's an idea. After working on it a little more, I'm not sure that's really a drive line. It floats back and forth as you turn the horizontal hold, and basically disappears if you set contrast & brightness so that the upper and lower bars are true black when you're watching a letterboxed movie.

I think I'll touch up the cabinet and just play it for a few hours. Sometimes you look so hard that you see problems that aren't really problems.

Phil Nelson

Phil,

Very nice. I am so glad that there are the few of us that see the value in restoring these pieces of our American Heritage...

Phil,
That's a beautiful Philco!
Glad to know your wife loved it...who couldn't?
You sure got it working quick too! Do you think it will be hard to find a good picture tube for this model?

Me likey VEDDY, VEDDY much !

After working on it a little more, I'm not sure that's really a drive line. It floats back and forth as you turn the horizontal hold, and basically disappears if you set contrast & brightness so that the upper and lower bars are true black when you're watching a letterboxed movie.

I suspect the line is due to either a sync overshoot or the color burst which is not being blanked on horizontal retrace. You can prove this by adjusting the Horizontal Hold while still in sync, so as the picture moves slightly to the right you will see the bar shift to the left. You may also be able to minimize it by adjusting the fine tuning so that the high video frequencies (picture detail) diminishes and the line will disappear.

Are you receiving the TV signal via cable or a DTV set top box? Do you see it on all channels?

Yes, if I move the horizontal hold left while retaining sync, the picture moves left very slightly, and so does the line. The line is also minimized when I adjust the fine tuning for less sharp detail.

When that photo was taken, I was receiving a broadcast from my in-house transmitter (Blonder-Tongue agile modulator) on rabbit ears. Haven't looked for the phantom line using another source yet, but I'll do so tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I'm glad I decided to pull the safety glass and do some cleaning. The inside of the glass was almost as grubby as the CRT face. I have never seen a screen & glass quite this dirty.

Phil Nelson

http://antiqueradio.org/art/PhilcoF4626MDirtyCRT.jpg

I've seen much worse, try cleaning a smoker's set. bleck.

Dang. After playing for a while, I heard arcing and the picture went nuts. I quickly powered down, then tried again in a few minutes with room dark and the HV cage open. After the set warmed up fully, I saw a two-inch spark shoot from the side of the flyback to the cage body.

There is freshly melted wax below the flyback.

Is it worth trying to recoat it with RTV, or should I assume it's shorted and look for a replacement?

Phil Nelson

Maybe there's a little too much current thru the flyback? That could melt some wax. And make for excessive HV? IIRC backing off on the drive may help, but the service notes should say what the current should be set to. I think you don't have a short in the flyback, or else the set wouldn't work as well as we see in the pictures, unless it got bad after the arcing. Some RTV should help, overcoating the existing wax "tire" on the high voltage secondary. But I'd check for carbon traces that may have formed in the wax.

Oh, I'm sure you cleaned inside there, so cobwebs and such should be gone.

It wasn't really dirty inside the cage, but I cleaned in there anyway. This set has no drive adjuster and the Sams manual says nothing about drive. I posted a link to the schematic earlier in this thread.

Phil Nelson

Here's the victim.

http://antiqueradio.org/art/PhilcoF4626MFlybackMelt.jpg

http://antiqueradio.org/art/PhilcoF4626MFlybackWax.jpg

Some of the layers under the doughnut had melted and sagged down so that you could just flick them off with a fingernail.

Should I try to melt off the old wax before recoating with RTV? Seems like I should at least reflow it with a heat gun so that it doesn't have big cracks.

The arc came out the side of the doughnut as seen in the second photo, going to the side of the cage. A very healthy spark! I'm not sure whether it came from the big crack seen in the first photo, or possibly from the nib where the rectifier lead enters the coil, since I only saw it for an instant.

If the cause of overheating is excessive HV, I'm not sure how to change that other than by modifying component values, as the set lacks a drive adjuster. After I noticed the vertical (drive?) line on the screen, I replaced the two 5% resistors (R83, R84) connected to the HOT input grid; both had drifted more than 20%.

My initial HV reading was a little low, about 14KV rather than the 16KV-18KV given in the schematic. That was before I recapped the sweep board and replaced a few resistors to address a vertical linearity problem. I hadn't tested the HV after that.

Unless someone has a better idea, I guess I'll recoat it, fire up the set again, and see what happens . . . .

Phil Nelson

Phil,
When it arced, was an RF arc (ie., hissy and sizzly sounding)? Or was it a loud, sharp "SNAP!"? If the latter, it is most likely rectified HV arcing through a pinhole in the 1B3 filament loop insulation.
Re. the drive line, did it change at all with the contrast setting?
Bill(oc)

Ouch! If that RTV doesn't do the trick, let us know the part numbers from SAMS. I just came across a box of 30 NOS Halldorson horizontal outputs and yokes, 1968 stock. There's a small chance.

Great job on getting the set going.

Kevin

The sound seemed more like a constant sizzling and the spark was a bright blue constant stream. I just cleaned the 1B3 filament loop and didn't see any gaping holes, although I suppose a tiny needle hole would be hard to spot.

The line definitely was minimized when I changed contrast & brightness to make the background truly black, although I'm not sure if that was due to the contrast setting alone.

Phil Nelson

Yeah, that would definitely be coming from the 'tire' itself, not from the 1B3 filament loop which would register as a loud SNAP or a staccato series of snaps.

that thing is toast, sorry bro.