My CTC-5

[bgadow]

I just got this old fella going again and wanted to share it with everyone. First, it's story:
In about '96 or so I was making my weekly trip to the flea market which at the time had a small antique mall on premises. I spotted from the back what appeared to be just another mid-50s RCA. Then I came around to the front...I couldn't get to the cashier fast enough! It had not been priced yet-had been brought in by the owner of the flea market-they got him on the radio and he said $100. I didn't haggle. Unfortunately I didn't get home til late that night but did power the set up in time for 11pm news. Not only did it work, it even had color! Ah, but thats just the beginning.

The next day I got out of bed and ran out to the garage to play with my new toy. Turned on the switch, audio came up fine, no raster. No raster-I got used to hearing that because it was gone for a number of years. I tried everything, and gave up several times. Finally a couple years ago I had the determination and some of the skills (plus the help of the antiqueradios forum) and I finally got it. In the end there were 2 problems: the first, which I think was the initial cause of the problems, was a shorted/burnt gob of capacitors & resistors hiding below the video board (under a shield) The terminal strip was toast-I don't know if it let go first causing the short or if the short cooked it. But fixing that alone didn't get me a raster. That was traced to the horizontal oscillator board, which I had recapped not long into this whole process. I'd gotten to know that board like the back of my hand, especially after realizing that the horizontal frequency was way off. So, what had happened was, dummy here put one end of one of the new capacitors through the wrong hole After untold hours of work I finally had a raster again. I got it tuned up pretty good and that was that. Then, after moving it from one end of the house to the other back in January it had lost the raster again. I finally dug into a couple days ago and it really wasn't a big deal-the 6CB5 ,with just a few hours on it, had gone to air sometime since I last powered it up. It needed a real good adjustment after the move but is now working better than I've ever seen it. Only remaining trouble is trouble with agc locking (thats what I'm calling it, anyway) but this doesn't worry me much right this moment. I need to study up on it someday and see whats causing it. I think I can get more contrast out of this set once I get that solved. I really find it hard to complain, I think this is pretty good considering the age and my skill level!

[Charlie]

Way to go! picture looks great from here!

[Eric H]

Very nice!
Wish I could get my 7 working right

Eric