[NJARC] Philco 60 Antenna Coil Fixed

[TrainBee]

I finally got it fixed.  This version of the Philco 60 antenna coil has 5 lugs along with a grounding lug that mounts to the chassis.  It took several hours of looking through magnifiers and carefully peeling away crud, wax, etc... from the lower end of the coil.  I did determine that the problem was with lugs 2  and 3.  









To get started, I removed some of the wax with a finger nail so as not to remove any of the coating from the wire. I found a part of the winding that was missing some coating and at that point, I did an ohms test from lug 2 to the bare wire.  Bingo, I found the wire, but not the section not connected to lug 3.  I continued along the same line as the wire I found and just a few millimeters over toward lug 3, there it was.  An extremely thin piece of wire in a spec of the wax that came off.  At this time, a part of the loop was loose, but not unwinding.  Good!  Just a little more toward lug 3, there was something I didn't expect to see, a solder joint with a short tail.  

At this point, I traced the wire coming from lug 3 into the coil.  Carefully removing the wax, I was able to trace it to a break point close to the solder joint I just found.  When I matched that short piece of wire I previously found, it matched exactly the gap that was missing.  The next task was the most delicate part of this entire repair.  How to reattach it all?

Since there was a good amount of the lead wrapped around the lug on the coil form, I carefully unsoldered the lead from the lug and there was enough to match it up with the tail from the coil.  In the attached photos, you will be able to see the repair I made.

Many of the responses I received from you expressed that it was likely a break at a turn to the lug.  You were all right on Point!  This repair from removal to reinstall test took about 4 hours.  I have no way of knowing how long it would have taken had I had to rewind this part of the coil.  I took the most conservative approach I could to avoid doing more damage.  Fingernails and toothpicks make great tools to get the wax off.

As I was working on this radio, doing research and employing what I had learned, what I've discovered, is that this radio has an enormous amount of information out there.  From the information from Ron Ramirez and the PhilcoPhorum, along with many others, you can confidently make effective repairs to this radio.  When this radio was presented to me, someone had done some work on it, but it was butchered with orange dips, clipped terminals on the capacitor blocks and incorrect electrolytics.  The owner told me it briefly worked when they bought it.  No wonder.








Last night, as I gave it its initial test, it came to life with a great sound.  In my basement here in rural Maine, with about 3ft of wire as an antenna, I was able to clearly hear WCBS 880 from NY just as if I was in NYC.  CFZM 740 from Toronto was weak, but perfectly readable.  I barely had to do any alignment.  Now, I'm going to put some sealer wax over what was repaired, reinstall the coil and let it do what it was designed for, play.

Attached are some photos of the coil.  

Thanks again for your help.

Joe Devonshire


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