Airline 04BR-513 encased in mud and grime

This Airline must have been buried in an old tool shed or basement somewhere for years. It was covered in dirt and dust when I got it. No damages or missing pieces however. Nice deco looking model.

Here what a clean one looks like. Nice!

(Courtesy of radioatticarchives: http://www.radioatticarchives.com/radio.htm?radio=4492)

 

 

Here what my Airline cabinet looked like. Yuk.

 

Here's the inside:

Came with no tubes.

So I plugged in a good set of tubes: 35Z5, 35L6, 12SA7, 12SK7, and 12SQ7.

 

I turned it on and all I heard was hum. So, I went ahead and bridged the metal canister filter capacitor with good filter capacitors.

I turned it on again and initially, I still heard hum. Turns out, my 12SA7 was bad. After replacing it with a good one, it turned on but station selectivity was poor. The radio sounds distorted or garbled. I replaced a few of the beeswax capacitors and the tuning started to improve. This radio was missing the antenna so I found a spare one. It improved audio still further but still not good.

I cleaned out the tuning capacitor with some cleaner and wire brush. I was careful not to bend the tuning plates. The chassis needed a good cleaning with solvent and a wire brush too!

Next, I will do a thorough circuit check for possible bridging or loose connections. Also, I will perform an Ohmmeter test of resistors and capacitors.

 

 

Sounded much better.

Next, a good cleaning of the cabinet. Extensive polish and buff. Easier said than done. No cracks under all the grime. Wow!

I had to find a replacement antenna. Luckily, I had spare one that fit perfectly and sounded great. I also needed to reproduce a backing board. I used 1/4" heavy fiberboard. The original attachment clips were still in the cabinet so I reused those. Here's what the reproduction backing board looks like:

Not too shabby.

Here is the end result. Isn't it a beauty?

Wanna buy it?

http://www.retroradiofarm.com/collections/frontpage/products/art-deco-1940-airline-model-04br-513-am-brown-swirly-marbled-bakelite-tube-radio-works