Well, I dragged another set home from college. I'm currently working as a sound tech for the theater department as part of an independent study project. Last week, my professor was cleaning out a barn used for prop storage, and I visited him there to discuss some issues with the PA system. While I was there, I checked out the loft of the barn. It was completely dark up there, but using my cell phone for light, I caught the glint of a CRT. A few minutes later, I dragged this out into the light of day for the first time in god knows how many years.
http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u193/fsjonsey/th_DSC01115.jpg (http://s168.photobucket.com/albums/u193/fsjonsey/?action=view&current=DSC01115.jpg)
It's a Philco "Deluxe 23." It has to be from the early 60's, as the Philco-Ford name appears nowhere on the set. The power cord was badly deteriorated, but the cabinet was in immaculate shape for sitting in the loft of a run down, unheated barn for close to thirty years. I grabbed a cheater cord from the basement, and plugged it in. It works great, and the filter caps test like new on my ESR meter. I'm pretty sure that at one time, this set occupied the lounge of one of our residence halls, as it has a dorm name and floor number written on the cabinet back.
If I hadn't saved it, it would have ended up being gutted and used as a stage prop. Right now I'm using it to watch DVD's of The Twilight Zone and Peter Gunn. The tuner is a bit dirty, but I'll take care of that when I get the time.

Also, it appears that the UHF tuner was added later, as I found the tuner delete plate lying loose in the cabinet when I took the back off. It's just a little gold pop-on button with UHF printed on it.

ANOTHER veteran saved !

Wow, that looks great! What a find.

There must have been pretty good skip the past few nights, as I was picking up Canadian UHF stations crystal clear with the built in loop antenna. That or it has a sensitive tuner.

Northeastern Ohio is not that far from Detroit or Windsor, Ontario, so you were probably getting the latter's UHF stations. Before I had cable and long before DTV, I could see every VHF and UHF local station in Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo in the spring, summer and early fall, just using an indoor UHF loop antenna. I enjoyed watching Detroit's channels 20, 50, 56 and 62 back in the '70s-'80s, with their old off-network reruns and other original programming, long before the new networks (UPN, now MyTV, The WB, now The CW, etc.) came in and destroyed the originality that made all big-city independent UHF stations so much fun to watch. I grew up near Cleveland (I live 35 miles east of the city today) and watched channels 43 and 61 to begin (they both went on the air in 1968), with channel 55 arriving 17 years later. I'll never forget the day channel 43, United Artists Broadcasting's WUAB-TV, went on the air. I was working on a TV in my basement at the time, with a radio playing on a local top-40 rock-and-roll station, when suddenly, an announcement broke in on the station's regular programming (in paraphrase): "Hey Cleveland! Drop what you're doing and turn on your TV -- WUAB-TV is on the air!" I immediately ran upstairs and turned on the TV in my living room to channel 43. WUAB was "on the air," all right--with a test pattern.

I'd enjoy DXing those Canadian UHF stations as long as I can, if I were you. Canada's DTV transition is scheduled for either next year or 2012; after that, we will have to use DVD players, VCRs, agile modulators, or cable/satellite to see anything on our prized vintage TVs.

And I'll never forget the fist time I saw "Polka Varieties" on WEWS. I think that was the last show Otis Redding appeared on.

Northeastern Ohio is not that far from Detroit or Windsor, Ontario, so you were probably getting the latter's UHF stations. Before I had cable and long before DTV, I could see every VHF and UHF local station in Detroit, Windsor, and Toledo in the spring, summer and early fall, just using an indoor UHF loop antenna. I enjoyed watching Detroit's channels 20, 50, 56 and 62 back in the '70s-'80s, with their old off-network reruns and other original programming, long before the new networks (UPN, now MyTV, The WB, now The CW, etc.) came in and destroyed the originality that made all big-city independent UHF stations so much fun to watch. I grew up near Cleveland (I live 35 miles east of the city today) and watched channels 43 and 61 to begin (they both went on the air in 1968), with channel 55 arriving 17 years later. I'll never forget the day channel 43, United Artists Broadcasting's WUAB-TV, went on the air. I was working on a TV in my basement at the time, with a radio playing on a local top-40 rock-and-roll station, when suddenly, an announcement broke in on the station's regular programming (in paraphrase): "Hey Cleveland! Drop what you're doing and turn on your TV -- WUAB-TV is on the air!" I immediately ran upstairs and turned on the TV in my living room to channel 43. WUAB was "on the air," all right--with a test pattern.

I'd enjoy DXing those Canadian UHF stations as long as I can, if I were you. Canada's DTV transition is scheduled for either next year or 2012; after that, we will have to use DVD players, VCRs, agile modulators, or cable/satellite to see anything on our prized vintage TVs.

Or a used DTV converter box.

And I'll never forget the fist time I saw "Polka Varieties" on WEWS. I think that was the last show Otis Redding appeared on.

How do you know about WEWS-TV (ABC channel 5) when you are over 1000 miles from Cleveland? :scratch2: I remember you mentioning in one of your posts a couple years ago that you lived in at least two other Midwestern states before coming to Louisiana. Did you live in the Cleveland area at one time? Just curious.

How do you know about WEWS-TV (ABC channel 5) when you are over 1000 miles from Cleveland? :scratch2: I remember you mentioning in one of your posts a couple years ago that you lived in at least two other Midwestern states before coming to Louisiana. Did you live in the Cleveland area at one time? Just curious.

Whoops - I meant to say the last appearance Otis made was on WEWS, not on Polka Varieties - that would have been funny though :D

I lived in Minnesota and No. Dakota from 1997-99. That was my real introduction to polka music, the KFGO Polka Party on Sunday afternoons. Someone lent me some tapes back then of the Polka Varieties program from WEWS Cleveland - I think it was syndicated to one of the Twin Cities stations. They were probably from around 1978-82. I've always leaned towards the Cleveland-style: Yankovic, Vadnal, Budzilek, etc. I'm probably the only person in the Gulf South who knows anything about polka.

How do you know about WEWS-TV (ABC channel 5) when you are over 1000 miles from Cleveland? <snio>.

LOL

I would say a few people saw WEWS from about 1000 miles, when they were on analog. 1000 miles is just about the right distance for sporadic-E skip, which does affect RF chanel 5.

At 100 miles, I have been too close to WEWS to see it directly by sporadic-E, but one night in 1983, I was seeing a channel 3 transmitter in Saskatchewan by Es. They were a station that was a repeater for a channel 5 station up there, but, that late at night, their channel 5 was off the air. So what was the channel 3 station transmitting? WEWS, which IT was getting by Es!


Another LOL: Before "Mad Men" came out, I never knew that all television viewing in the 1960s was by sporadic-E!

Nice Save!

That set looks great.