I've been blessed!
 

I just acquired a CTC-5 :banana:

Pete Deksnis contacted me to say there was one available that "might be close enough" to me.

Well, it was about 200 miles away in Fort Wayne ...hmmm..
And a coworker hails from Indiana, and has relatives there ... hmmm
And his brother goes between northwest Indiana and Fort Wayne from time to time ... hmmm
And by the way, the owner, John Leone (not sure if he hangs out here) was GIVING IT AWAY if someone would only promise to restore it and let him see the result - :yippy:

It arrived yesterday, and I've only had time to remove the back and stare fondly at the chassis.

The attached pictures are from before it was picked up in Fort Wayne.
It's a Westcott Color Super Model 21CT785-5U, the last 5 meaning Mahogany and the U indicating UHF tuner included. There is a tag on the tube cap indicating the CRT was replaced on February 23 1962, but it also has the date code recorded as 6217, which would be in April. I can't see where to read the actual date code on the CRT. It reportedly worked when last turned on over 10 years ago. A quick inspection shows no obvious signs of problems, flyback looks good.

As you can see, it also looks intact with knobs and all.

First order of business will be a recap - if anyone has already created a list of required caps, I'd appreciate it, otherwise that's the first step for me.

I'll post some more "before" pix as soon as I can.

Thanks again to Pete and John, and Jim Laud, the transporter. :thmbsp:

Good on ya Wayne, really. :thmbsp: Gorgeous set.

Free! Imagine that. I'm a shade of emerald green only a CT-100 can reproduce.

;)

man and I thought I got lucky with my free CTC-11

What a beautiful set! Most excellent. I'm glad to see its in the hands of a collector who will care for it.

Nice CTC-5, I have the exact same model, it was my first roundie and I'll never part with it. I finally had DirectTV installed in the last month and have mine hooked up to it in my bedroom (main set is an HDTV rear projection in the living room.) I loved showing it to my girlfriend and telling her the set is over 5 years older than she is (and she's 44!).

Very nice, clean CTC-5. And the price was right. I owned a Westcott some years ago. I always liked that it was, for a CTC-5, a more compact upright console.

-Steve D.

Nice set!

Frenchy where have you been?


polaraman

So, let me get this straight . . .

A. You get this wonderful TV for free.

B. Someone delivers it to you for free.

Man, you must be livin' right :-)

Phil Nelson

Congratulations for this nice peace of American television history.

For me the first step is an inspection of the chassis and the crt. Check for previous repairs. Check for the correct tubes in their places. Check for burned caps, coils, resistors etc..

My philosophy of recapping is to replace only those caps which are absolutely necessary for proper working condition. I want to leave the set in nearly original condition as it is possible. I know that many people replace all caps whether it is neccesary or not. But this is not an intelligent choice. Many caps are not critical.

Note for designations: I have the RCA field data service sheet.

Next step: reforming electrolytic caps C103,104,105, see:

http://www.vcomp.co.uk/tech_tips/ref...eform_caps.htm

I use a mains power supply with 0 to 350 volts in steps of 5 volts and measuring the current. Step by step with increasing voltage. Do not exceed 80 mA current in low voltages and 40 mA with high voltages.

Candidates for recapping: all coupling capacitors and waxies excluding micas and ceramics. Look for R C parallel, they are not critical. Screen grid caps are also not critical. Caps with a low voltage difference are also not critical. Those caps with a ! are a must. I recommend to check all caps with a ! first and then fire up the set and see what happens. While fire up, remove F102 and measure the d.c. current. This should not exceed 600 mA!

Power supply: C133 !,
PW600 (line oscillator): check C601, 602, 603.
Horizontal output and high voltage: C112, 115, 119, 120.
PW500 (vertikal osc. and output): C501, 504 !, 507 !, 508 !, 509, 510 !,
PW700 (color and video output): C714 !, 715, 731 !, 732.
PW400-A (video amp): C403, 132A, 132B.
PW400-B (blanker): C408 !
PW300 (I-F): nothing
PW200 (sound): C212 !
PW200-B (AGC, sync): C217 !, 222 !
Tuner: C116 !

Resistors: I found some resistors with increased resistance. But checking these is recommended when you have a raster or a picture.

Kind regards,
Eckhard

Oooooh ! I HATE you !! Free CTC-5, in GLORIOUS shape, free delivery...Oooooooh...Seriously, that is a gorgeous set...Can't wait to see pics of it runnin'...You are one lucky guy ! Also glad to see another veteran going to a very loving home, & not getting tossed.

Oh I'm always checking around in here! Hope to get my ctc-10 remote set set up in a permanent working location in the near future, I collect pinball machines too so never enough room in this tiny house to set up both tvs and pinballs. Have one b/w set set up and working along with the ctc-5 but the roundies take up a ton more room so I am in process of rearranging things around here.
Frenchy

Eckhard, thanks for the excellent detailed advice! I will be working strange hours this week and probably will not be able to make a thorough inspection until Friday.

Any hints on physically pulling the chassis, or is it obvious when you look at it?

- Wayne

From my quickly fading memory:
Remove the knobs on side and at front control box, remove control box (two screws I think), unplug shielded rca plug from tuner, unplug antenna wire from tuner, unbolt the tuner and it can then be bolted onto the rear of the chassis, remove the underside bolts, unplug the hv from the tube it's plugged into and remove insulator clip from cage lid, unplug the speaker at it's lugs. Watch it, this chassis weighs a TON.

The chassis is very heavy. If you want to operate the chassis outside the set with CRT connected, you should make an extension for the deflection yoke wires. You need an octal plug in and an octal socket for it. It is much easier to measure currents and voltages with the chassis outside.

Please check the cap numbers. I have seen that the SAMS and the RCA manual reported different countings for the caps.

BTW: last week I was in our newspaper with a report about the introducing of color television in Germany:

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold...22082007_2.jpg

After this report, I got a telephone call on last saturday. An old, retired engineer in a village 5 Kilometers far away want to give away his 1967 color tv set. I was sceptical and expected one of these heavy monsters. But what I got was a small, 19 inch color tv set with shunt regulator and a 490YB22 in excellent condition. The CRT has 1.1 to 1.2 mA on all three guns and the chassis is very clean without rust. I never found such a clean chassis of this period before. Here is a photo of this set:

http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold..._inBetrieb.jpg

It is not a good photo, but you can imagine what it looks like.

Kind regards,
Eckhard

very nice

I have a Westcott and they are neat sets. I was noticing the legs on this one, they seem much shorter than the legs on my set. (Maybe a different production run?) The legs on my set are gold colored like on this set but are tapered getting more slender toward bottom. The legs on this set appear to be shorter and thicker...unles it's just me or an optical illusion. No big deal, this is a great set. Congratulations on getting it!

Gilbert

When I was a kid we had a set just like that. This was in the early 70s. Oure didnt have the legs on it. It sat right on the floor. It broke down a few times and my dad would tinker with and get it working again. He finally got tired of messing with it and got rid of it,probably about 73 or 74. It sat in the back of an old store building he owned for several yaers and then it finally got tossed. It would be nice to have it back now.
John

They are shorter than the picture in the brochure - don't know if they could be substitutes.

Here's a quick look in the back. I thought the flyback cover was gone - turns out it was stuck beside the chassis along with the screens from the bottom openings. For some reason, I didn't hear them bouncing around when it was carried in.

Can anyone tell me where the date code would be on this "Colorama" tube? Hidden under the yoke or cover perhaps?

Old_tv_nut-

I am going to be repairing a CTC-5 that I got from another AK member recently, and it does not have the flyback cover. Could you take a few pictures of just the cover for me while yours is off? I will need to make one for mine. Thanks for your help.

Chris

Here are views from each edge, and being installed - looks like it needs a long screw to fasten at the near left corner as viewed here.

Hi I see the cover from here.

Thank you! I really appreciate the pictures. "14 views"-it looks like others have wanted to see them as well. :)

Just found this post,, very very nice set indeed!
Dan

Now for a littlle cold water - just drove 60 mi and back to borrow the CRT tester from DRH, and found out I shouldn't have bothered because the heater is open. (measures 180k ohms, actually - don't know where that is coming from). NO visible heaters when the tester is attached.

Has the tube gone to air? I can't tell - doesn't spark or anything when the tester is applied, but I suppose the tester voltage may be too low to do that.

Does anyone know if anyone is rebuilding metal cone 21AXP22A CRTs? (And is it worth bothering if it went to air, in case it has an air leak at the face seal?)

Tried knocking on the base a bit with no results. Anyone with experience that some other treatment (e.g. heating the pins?) might have success?

Anyhow, unless I could find a CRT, working on the rest of the set is not such a rush job anymore. :pity:

I'm sorry to hear that, truly a bummer. :sigh:

You could try heating the pins and dabbing a little solder on the ends so it wicks into the pin, I'm doubtful though in this case.

How hard is it to remove the yoke?
The getter is somewhere in that area, usually a ring of clear glass on the neck with the getter showing through.

Yes by all means try soldering the heater pins. I have had at least a couple of bad solder joints on the filiment pins. Heat it up with a 100 watt iron and let it suck some solder into the tip of the pin. If the original solder connection was marginal, it is possible that the heat of the tube combined with the heavy current of 3 filiments going through the pins, may have caused the solder joint to fail.

Hawkeye can rebuild it if it is under vacuum. He can not guarantee that it will be a success, because sometimes a metal tube will crack the face of the tube during the rebuilding. That said, another AK member has had Hawkeye do a successful rebuild of a 21axp22 and was very pleased with the results. I believe the cost is about $350 plus shipping.

Good luck and let us know what you find. Hope it has not gone to air.

If the getter flash still appears mirror-like, then the tube is certainly under vacuum. If it's milky-colored and is flaking off, then the tube is garbage.

I'm sorry to hear this news-the fact it is not infinity could be reason to have hope. Let us know how you do with pin resoldering, etc.

---

It sounds like you have a high resistance connection in the base. On several occasions I had to remove the base and re-tin the oxidated leads. Fred

Just curious, is the CRT base loose? If so, high resistance connection could certianly be the problem. One of the filament leads may have pulled slightly out of the plug, possibly when the CRT socket was removed. Hopefully thats all thats wrong.

Ok, I tried reflowing the heater pins - no change, still reads about 180k. Pete Deksnis told me the 21AXP22A included arc fixes - that may be the high resistance I'm measuring if things are shorted internally???

Took off the neck hardware and yoke, pictures attached. I can't recognize a getter area - is it the thin light band between the black dag ring and the large black dag area on the neck funnel? That area is cloudy and looks orangish if you shine a flashlight through from the bottom.

Haven't figured out how the plastic shield cone and CRT are mounted yet, see four clips but not sure if the shield can be removed by itself. Anyway, the chassis will have to come out first. Hope to see more at Doug's place tomorrow - he has one with the chassis removed already.

BTW, i am repeatedly wiggling and tapping after each attempted fix - the base allows a tiny movement when you try to rotate it, but the ohmmeter doesn't budge no matter what

The 21AXP22A arc fix involved a high resistance internal connection to the HV (bell), so that an internal arc woul be less likely to do any damage, and eliminated the need for an external resistor in series with the ultor connection. Probably unrelated to you filament problem.

Scotty at Hawkeye is (I think) willing to attempt a 21AXP22 rebuild, but I suspect it would not be cheap. If you hunt around in the collecting circles, you will likely find one.

The tube has gone to air, the white ring is supposed to be black and shiny.

The heaters no doubt burned up when it was powered up with air in the tube. :sigh:

With no further comments coming in, I've decided I will hold onto this set for maybe a year at most while hoping to get a usable/rebuildable 21AXP22A.
When I get to the point of finally giving up, then free to a good home, the same terms I received it on. Too bad the face seal can't be fixed. :sigh:

Don't give up on this set yet. You have options. The glass 21CYP22 will work in this chassis with some slight mods. I believe many later 21" round tubes will also work in your CTC-5.

-Steve D.

Run some Wanted ads on the forums and on the ETF website. There is a good chance you will fina a 21AXP22 out there. And as Steve D says, you can always put a glass 21" crt in it.

Thanks for the encouragement! Not giving up yet, just trying to set some limits to get myself moving as much as anything else.

Here is the "cheap and dirty" cover I made. Thank you again, old_tv_nut, and good luck on finding a usable CRT for your CTC-5.