[ARC5] BC453 repair

[J Mcvey via ARC5]

I finally got around to fixing the "new to me, 28V virgin" BC453 today . It started out pretty straightforward with a quick ESR cap check showed the usual suspects  needing replacement ,such as the .22X3 ,etc. I replaced the 10W diver resistor that someone has removed , lubed up the dynamotor and applied 24 volts with anxious anticipation of hearing some beacon stations. All I got was a brief cackling, then silence- NO JOY! 

I pulled the 12K8 grid cap and was encouraged when I was able to get noise by touching the cap. When the cap wire was put back, it went silent again. I thought it was the RF stage but everything checked out. 

It turned out that the oscillator was dead, in fact I was surprised to find the osc plate at 2.6 ohms to ground! Why, might you ask? They plate tune the oscillator stage, so there is B+ on the gang variable! There must have been a tiny speck of metal shaving in there somewhere which I could not see, before or after blowing it out with air which cleared the short.

Once that was done the receiver was howling away with a 50 microvolt signal lead laying on the bench about 3 ft away and no antenna.
I've got some more cleaning and tweaking to do, but I'm a happy camper now, knowing that the radio is basically in very good shape.