RCA AR88D

[kevin.Hoyland]

                       


Hello.

It as taken me a long time to put my hand on a AR88D in orignal conditon and with its orginal manual and 14 spare valves.
I have a 10" dia speaker rated at 2.5 ohms which I will use with this set.

Regards,

kevin.

[pwdrive]

Nice  

Watch yer fingers if it's set to transmit position, it can bite..a lot.

Do what's needed to give the output transformer a long life.

Good luck.

Lawrence.

[beamcurrent]

Very nice to see one in such UN-molested condition, I see the spline tool, the correct name escapes me, for the knob grub screws. Are the trimming tools under the top RF cover? AIR there are two of them.

Brian

[kevin.Hoyland]

                        Hello Lawrence.

I will do the work to keep the Transformer in good condition.

Brian

The Trimming tools are not under the top cover but you can see one of the sets tools is on the side of the cover.

Regards
Kevin

[pwdrive]

That looks in very good condition, a nice find, the rear chassis apron hasn't got any bodge holes in it either, not sure how you're into restoration but if it were mine I would leave as is cosmetically.

Usual ancient capacitor problems for a receiver of that age, the bathtubs might be leaking in both senses plus maybe a few resistors out of spec, if I remember there's a couple on the bias board that can give problems, I seem to remember that the RF gain control is some oddball value.

Sometimes the tuning drive gearbox can be troublesome if it's had a hard life, any backlash will show up when tuning SSB/CW, I stripped the box on the one I had and reset the anti backlash gears, regreased/lubed etc and it was ok, the Xtal filter can be aligned without a sweeper but it's a bit of an art if you've not done one before, when done and the alignment is ok it'll pull in plenty of DX and should be sharp on CW, with a decent antenna.

EDIT: You might have to alter the BFO injection for SSB, gimmick capacitor or whatever.

Lawrence.

[kevin.Hoyland]

Lawrence.


I have been changing capacitors and Resistors over the weekend so then i put the AR88D on the lamp limitor to see  if all looked ok and it did. so I then i put it on to 240 volts and Boy the sound is good, stations coming in from all over the place. Henry from Canada emailed me to say that he can tell from the ser/number that the AR88D was made in Bloomington USA in 1944.

Kevin.

[pwdrive]

That's good news, when I had mine I submitted the S/No to Henry Rogers at The Western Historic Radio Museum along with some S/no's from some Hallicrafters and HRO's I had, nice chap.

Should get some good DX from the AR88...Maybe some VK or JA with a decent antenna.

Lawrence.

[Radio Fixer]

Beautifully made, impressive. What does the rod do in picture 3? Is that the knob spline tool?

ta Gary

[pwdrive]

It might be the one to adjust the plunger capacitors, the was a socket on one end to slacken the lock nuts and a hook on the other end to move the plungers in and out.

Lawrence

[kevin.Hoyland]

Lawrence you are right regarding the tool in photo 3.

Kevin