[Hallicrafters] My First Boat Anchor Restoration: SX101 MkIII

[Jason Hissong]

Hi guys,

I am new to using and hopefully restoring old radios.  I have grown
particularly fond of Hallicrafters gear since I got my HT37 at Dayton
a few years back.  Well, I picked up an SX101 Mk III at Dayton this
past year.

When I opened it up, it appears that someone already went in and
replaced the caps with Olsen type "TV" Capacitors.  It also appears a
few caps were added to the capacitor can in the power supply.  I was
told by local hams to replace the Olsen caps so I plan to do this.

The unit is in great cosmetic condition.  When I fire it up, there is
no hum whatsoever.  All the features appear to work, selectivity,
volume, notch, mode switch, audio etc.  However, I hear barely
anything coming out of the receiver with the RF gain all the way up.
I went in a cleaned up the band switch contacts and that improved
things somewhat.  I can hear signals, however, the frequency does not
change when I turn the VFO knob. The volume changes (i.e, the receiver
appears to get less sensitive as I move away from a particular
frequency).  This only happens when the Calibrator is engaged (which I
picked up after I got the radio).  With the calibrator off, I hear
nothing.

I went ahead and ordered a cap replacement kit for it from Hayseed.  I
am hoping there are some bad caps in there.

Any tips or a general idea what may be going wrong would be
appreciated.  This will be my first boat anchor project.  I do have
experience building kits (I have build a few K2s, KX1, etc)

Thanks es 73,
Jason N8XE