So, I've finally had time to get back to the 5-50. I put together a battery box
made out of stuff from Radio Shack. Holds 10 9 Volts for B+ and 4 D cells for A.
Poking around in my Dad's stuff, I found what looked like a nice Crosley speaker, Dynacone model F.
The bad news is that this speaker had an electromagnetic field rather than a horseshoe magnet. The worse news is that someone ripped out the internal workings and replaces it with a little 3" perm-mag modern dynamic speaker.
Even though it's wrong for this radio, I hope I can find proper insides at some point.
So I dug out an old unrestored Radiola 100 I had laying around and hooked the whole thing up. Added a 10' antenna and ground, plugged in the tubes, turned up the filament voltage and ... nothing. Checked the wiring, and realized I had left out the jumper between A- an C. With that installed, I turned it on again and found KYW without much trouble. Good start, but I'm so closed to KYW that I can almost receive it by sticking an antenna into a bar of soap. I was concerned that I heard no sign of oscillation in the detector even with the tickler fully engaged.
A little further investigation showed that I had wired the newly re-wound tickler in backwards. After fixing that, even with the tiny 10' antenna I had stations all across the dial. The volume is not great, but better than I expected using the '01A as the final audio amp.
At this point, I reinstalled everything in the cabinet, and here is how it looks now:
The brass came up nicely with a bit of magic wadding followed by a coat of laquer.
Here's the front,
Side and the unrestored Radiola 100,
And the inside,
Finally, a close-up of the label.
So, at this point I'm a happy camper. This is the oldest thing I've worked on (ca. 1926) and I was a bit nervous about attempting it, but while some of the components looked exotic, the circuit was straightforward and there was virtually no unobtanium. Pretty much anything it it could be replaced or rebuilt if necessary. One thing it is missing is the dial paper. I hope I can find a reproduction somewhere. I'd also like, at some point, to find a proper Crosley Musicone speaker for it. Meanwhile I'll look into rebuilding the Radiola speaker. Has anyone here had experience with those? The entire supporting structure for the cone has disintegrated. It appears to be some sort of soft leather (Kid?) Is there reproduction grill cloth available?
So now onward to the next project. I think maybe it's this guy's turn.
