I fixed up the '66 Airline console today and brought it back to life after sitting idle for over 30 years. After looking into it, for some reason the set has ALL original tubes on the chassis. However, its had its fair share of repairs back in the 60's. Its quite the economy TV for its time. First things first, the set had to be brought up slowly on a variac. Luckily all the lytics came back well. After initial power up, the audio was terrible and distorted caused by a leaky 5uf@25v lytic in the cathode of the 6BQ5 audio output. yes, a cheap TV that uses a 6BQ5, I was surprised too. A simple tuner cleaning helped greatly. The convergence was way off, the purity ring support disinigrated and the lateral magnet was missing, fell out of its metal frame. Luckily, I have a good supply of misc. rings and magnets for the old color sets. the CRT is basically like new. Its a "Wards Airline" crt EIA 337, made by westinghouse (!) which I was not aware that they produced CRTs. Only problem next to the audio was a rather dark picture caused by the video output tube. The 12BY7 needed to be replaced.
I was pleased to see the TV come back to life with a great color picture. The focus dialed in as good as you could hope for. This set probably cost somewhere around $250 new? Im amazed such a cheapy of a TV still survived in such nice shape, and the picture quality is as good as a zenith or RCA of the same time period.

Nice job, Doug! What does the schematic look like? Partly an RCA clone, or very different? Would be interested to see what color circuits look like.

Schweet! Looks great Doug!

Wayne,

The chassis is essentially a perfect clone of a CTC16. the ctc16 PW700 (chroma board) is an exact match to the board in this airline. the HV cage is a unique design, which is about the only difference between the two and the tuner assembly. The IF and deflection boards are also an exact match to a ctc16. Its interesting to note, that the component indentifications also match that of the ctc16. Filters C124, C118, C136 are labeled exactly the same on the airline schematic and the rca ctc16 schematic. So I guess there is no reason for me saying the picture is as "good" as an rca. It is an RCA! (for the most part).

The dyin' days of the roundie..Great save !

Doug,

Nice job bringing that Airline set back. Beautiful picture. I recall back in the mid 60's walking into a Wards store and right at the front door was a price leader roundie on display. I think it was priced at $249. or so. It had a black fiber board cabinet and NO frills grey plastic trim and knobs. That set really stuck in my memory.

-Steve D.

Doug, what is the history of the set? Where did it come from??? ...and Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all from the land downunder

our first family color set was an Airline in 1964, a CTC-15 chassis. Beautiful color picture on that set. I remember we turned it on for the first time to see Bonanza; when the peacock came on the picture was all green and stayed that way until Wards came out; I remember he replaced a tube or maybe two and from then on perfect. I used that set until 1987 long after my parents bought a rectangular screen set in 1974 when I bought my own house and the roundie went with me. When I built a Heath 25 inch set in 1977, that roundie was relegated to the bedroom; eventually it played out in 1987 and I put it in a storage shed. I ravaged parts out of it to repair other people's roundies. So enthralled with my heath set was I that I never thought of the future of the roundies. Eventually took what was left to the junk yard like a fool; it was a metal cabinet so no great loss there. I've still got the 1977 Heath set in the garage, hasn't been turned on in 18 or 19 years. I think the pix tube was getting weak was reason I got another newer set. The new set was a Sharp and its still being used on our back porch at 20 years old; I stopped using it in 1998 when I bought a WebTV system and it looked terrible thru that set. But that Airline set was great and a big regret is junking it back in the 80's.

Doug,

Back then I think a lot of those sets were made by Wells-Gardner. The Sears, Airlines and Cm all had the same type of lay-out and circuit boards, the Cm entertainment system I have has a plastic bezel around the Crt.

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I have an 1964 Airline round set in a black enameled metal cabinet which is probably a bottom of the line model...I agree with Andy, it looks a lot better than some of the monstrous wood cabinets!

Looking at a Sears catalog from 1965 (My Wards catalog from 1964 for some reason did not include color sets, they were in a separate brochure)
The cheapest 21" round set is $329.95 and the most expensive is $539.95.
The only things the most expensive set seems to have over the cheapest is a cabinet with legs, an extra speaker on the left side and automatic degaussing.
All of these sets as far as I know used the exact same chassis (which is a CTC-15 clone). I guess they sold the "sizzle" rather than the "steak"...as the cheapest set's performance would be almost identical with the most expensive.

Here are some scans of the round sets in the 1965 Sears catalog.

http://nipper.freeshell.org/pictures/sears/sears_rect_and_round-2.jpg

http://nipper.freeshell.org/pictures/sears/sears_round_sets_small.jpg

This brings up an interesting question - did anyone in the US public at the time even REALIZE that all color TV sets were more or less exactly the same, and that all the advertised 'color guard' and all gimmicks were basically nothing?

Its a "Wards Airline" crt EIA 337, made by westinghouse (!) which I was not aware that they produced CRTs.

This has been brought up a couple times, once by me. I had a late (74 or 75) Motorola Quasar with the orginal Motorola branded crt (19v, black matrix) with the 337 code. I think the other one mentioned (just recently) may have been a Curtis-Mathes? Westinghouse quit making tv sets in 69 or 70 but must have had a decent business selling color crt's.

I really like oddballs like this Airline. I still kick myself for not buying an Airline rectangular console from about 66-67-showed up a number of years ago at the local auction house, and I most certainly could have bought it for a dollar.

This brings up an interesting question - did anyone in the US public at the time even REALIZE that all color TV sets were more or less exactly the same, and that all the advertised 'color guard' and all gimmicks were basically nothing?
Consumer Reports magazine probably did tests, and they have traditionally been good at identifying "clone" appliances, so maybe they concentrated on other ways of seeing differences-cabinet quality, warranties, alignment/reception quality, etc.

Remember the big 4 for manufacturing tubes and CRT's: RCA, Sylvania, GE and Westinghouse. When they would tool up for production, they all knew what each was doing and would trade so the Westinghouse CRT could have been another product that was traded. I remember opening up a Zenith tube (6JU8 maybe) and it was branded "Admiral". Dan Geddings was the biggest Zenith serviceguy here then and we turned it back in for a "Zenith" tube as that made him mad! He was a dyed in the wool Zenith guy.

Thanks for the nice words. Id like to mention that I found some more "cheapness" in this TV: I noticed this evening that the legs are actually molded plastic, with brass end caps on them! They still use the same 1/4-20 threads that screw into the bottom of the cabinet like the typical wooden legs. These budget sets are the hardest ones to find, they got used and thrown away. Being cheaper in design, they were a little "flimsy" in design from a mechanical stand point. Most didnt last too long and they didnt have any special value other than being just a TV, much like a portable or table sets. Its great to find zeniths and RCA's but this was a very nice unique find for the collection.

ceebee, this set came from a Chicago estate sale a couple week ago. Found in the basement of an apartment building.

As for cabinets, I can agree with all of you that commented. I enjoy the plain cabinet sets or danish modern best. Thats why I like the 60's table/portable sets so much, as they're simple, for function only with good 60's industrial design.

What a HOOT reading the marketing literature. My favorite is the "25,000 volt chassis for fringe reception" line. As if the HV has anything to do with it, or as another AK'er pointed out all of 'em had 25 KV anyway. I'm surprised they didn't put in something about AGC for sharper picture.

"Sell th' Sizzle, Not th' Steak..." or more apropos in this case, "If you can't Dazzle 'em w/Brilliance, Baffle 'em w/Bullshit". You have now completed Marketing 101. Please send $250 to Dr. Ing. Professor Unca Sandy, & he'll send you back a genuine imitation sheepskin proclaiming as such... Seriously, GREAT save on a rare roundie...

This brings up an interesting question - did anyone in the US public at the time even REALIZE that all color TV sets were more or less exactly the same, and that all the advertised 'color guard' and all gimmicks were basically nothing?

Just as now most people don't grasp the concept of HD, nor do they know what it takes to actually watch HD. When I worked at Circuit City, people would buy HD monitors and hook them to cable and wonder why the picture looked worse than it did on their analog sets. Basically color was the same way. Unless you had a trained eye most people couldn't tell the difference between one set and the other. Up until the time when the auto color features came in, I remember going to peoples homes and the flesh tones weren't set properly and the color was run almost all the way up.

Some years back someone was selling "rabbit ears" in Parade magazine that resembled a miniture satalite dish. Remember those? They were really playing with words such as "you're not getting cable because you're not paying for cable" and "Uses proven RF technology" to name a few. But what they were really saying touting these antennas would also apply to a coat hanger wire as well!!

Yeah, I remember those ! I remember reading the ads, too, & while they DIDN'T actually lie, they kinda sorta didn't tell the whole story, either, sorta like. Again, the "Baffle 'em w/Bullchip" story....

i remember many "cheap" tvs having very good pictures. i owned a 25 inch pennys set the early 80s (console with a space at the top for a vcr), that had one of the best pictures ever. dont know who made it,but was it sharp! my friend has a 32 inch sanyo flat screen bought at walmart. stunning to say the least. convergance is perfect,very deep reds,and the fleshtones are like an early zenith.beautiful! analog set that blows away my hd dlp. the cost-229.00!
back in the shop days,we had many sears,pennys,wards,packard bells,etc that had fantastic pictures.the best picture i ever saw was a 25 inch penncrest hybrid in a used furniture store back in the late 70s.it had a rauland crt and i think it was a wells-gardner. great set. looked just like a low hour zenith. perfect in every way!

i owned a 25 inch pennys set the early 80s (console with a space at the top for a vcr), that had one of the best pictures ever. dont know who made it,but was it sharp!

I think every solid state era Penneys set I've seen was a rebadged RCA-they were always a safe bet.