Suitcase TV Fun

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by compucat

I always liked the wood cabinet version. I think it was a Silvertone brand but the same set as these.

The Silvertone set was made by Tele-Tone. Totally different!
The Sentinel was a lot better design!

[jr_tech]

Interesting... Anybody here know how many manufacturers made these vertical format suitcase sets?

A little progress... it was fairly obvious looking at the schematic that the lack of vertical deflection and inability to focus the Sentinal set could be related to an open HV divider chain. I almost jumped out of bed and went back out to the shop last night when I figured that out, but waited until this morning to find and replace a couple of 4.7 meg resisiors in the HV chain. Set now makes somewhat of a picture, and will get a full re-cap this weekend. I always prefer to start with a semi-working set, so I can judge progress, and catch errors that I might make.



jr

[decojoe67]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

The Silvertone set was made by Tele-Tone. Totally different!
The Sentinel was a lot better design!

Silvertone, Tele-Tone, and Firestone all were the same basic sets, although no wooden tabletop versions. I have the Tele-Tone version and it isn't nearly as good a set as the Sentinel/Airline models. There's also the unique Raytheon-Belmont 7" suitcase sets, but I've actually never seen one restored and working. They had a strange tuner design.

[jr_tech]

Finished up re-cap job on the Sentinal sweep/display chassis, including selenium rectifier replacment. Chassis looks "wide open" but there are some caps that are difficult to get to, horiz oscillator is crammed against the chassis edge, under a wiring bundle and terminal strip.



Now I have a fairly decent, fairly stable pix, with a little bit of horizontal "jitter", HV is now about 4.5 kV, which seems a bit low, but I really don't know what is correct for this set...anybody know what it should be?



Ordered a NOS 6Y6 for the HV oscillator, and am going through about 50 6SN7s to find the best for the set. Will scope out waveforms to attempt to locate the cause of the jitter tomorrow. Perhaps I should re-cap the Airline sweep/display chassis next, to compare behavior/waveforms.

jr

[jr_tech]

Re-capped the Airline sweep/display chassis and both rf/if/audio/video chassis, and replaced a few resistors that were way out of tolerance, and now have 2 complete suitcase TVs that make a picture and sound, although more work is needed on each.

The Airline exhibits some horizontal instability and some flagging, I am digging for some better 6SL7s for the sync circuit. The new 6Y6 did bring up the HV to almost 5 kv, which I guess is close enough to spec.



The Sentinal HV is only about 4.2 kv, so another 6Y6 has been ordered. Arcing also occurs periodically, so I will have to fix that before it gets its new 6Y6.



getting close,
jr