[Hallicrafters] crystal filter alignment

[Craig Roberts]

Over the years, much has been written about the wholly incomprehensible
alignment instructions authored by Hallicrafters comedy writers for some
of the SX-series receivers (SX-42, 62, 71, etc.), i.e. "....while slowly
adjusting a slug, rock the signal generator across the passband until
you find the null, then null the null with your crystal phasing control
and, when the signal is completely gone, peak the silence with a trimmer
on the weaker of the two silent signals, then adjust until the total
silence drops by another 2 dB..." or something like that.

What the….

Once again -- very slowly please -- please review the procedure in plain
English (or easily translatable Romance language), including setting the
Crystal Phasing control (and re-setting it, if necessary), when to use
modulated and unmodulated signals and the adjustment of those three pesky
trimmers which supposedly control the gain at each crystal filter 
selectivity
setting (mine don't seem to do anything unless screwed down to full 
capacity).

I've aligned my SX-42 at 455 KHz, but when I try to re-align it to the
crystal frequency it loses a LOT of gain. I'm obviously not nulling the
null to the peak null.

73,

Craig
W3CRR