hi everyone
i am from Portugal, in Europe
i recently bought a philco predicta siesta from an ebay auction in Italy
it has some very particular features that i think differ from the american models
a wood cabinet, epoxy dipped flyback, 21evp4, 110 and 220v selector switch and 50hz rating. nobody seems to know anything about this particular model , anyone of you guys has some info about it?
maybe a brazilian version that was brought to Europe?how can i tell if it runs on pal or ntsc or even pal-m ?
best regards
Hugo

198305
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_gQI8WSST4ZzkDKd3N3glw?view_as=subscriber

This is a black and white only TV so there is no color system (pal, ntsc or pal-m).

ok sorry because i am only used to work on german tv sets and my english is not perfect...i know that the set is BW that i s very very obvious....
my question is the line frequency will be the same as our sets and it will accept video from my euro RF modulator in principle or it will be for 525 lines instead?

Hugo, thanks for posting this. I've subscribed to your Youtube channel to follow the restoration story.

I'm not sure if you were aware of it, but this TV was being discussed on the Antique Radio Forums: http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2991167#p2991167

.

Hello neighbor!

Hugo, congratulations on acquiring that very rare Predicta. I have a US-built Holiday that was imported to Spain in 1960 and immediately placed into storage, it's still in new condition. I plan to power it up and restore as necessary once I get through a couple of other sets already on my bench.

I also have a couple of Philco sets from the same era that were built in Spain under license from Philco by Iberia Radio. They also have the voltage selector switch and European power cord. When I first saw that set on eBay I suspected it was made in Spain and then shipped to Italy, and when you removed the back I expected to see the luxury tax stamp on the chassis like every Spanish-made TV from that era:

https://i.imgur.com/EZlfYZSl.jpg

But that seems it is not the case. The sticker that is partially missing has the text Matr___ - this is not present on the US-built sets, nor on the Spanish ones, so I wonder if that is from a set built in another European country. For sure, there is a Spanish brochure for Philco TVs that includes the Predicta so I know they were at least offered for sale here.

With respect to the UHF tuner, I think that was delivered that way from the factory. The CCIR broadcasts in Spain were moved to UHF in 1961, and I suppose in Italy as well, so the sets had to include a UHF tuner in order to work. Given that the back panel on your set has UHF antenna terminals and printing, I think it must have come that way. All of my Philcos, both US and Spanish, have UHF tuners, and they are all pretty much the same - they look like an afterthought and not part of the original design.

In your video you sound very knowledgable and experienced already but if there is any help I can offer, let me know. I'm just excited to know someone else in Europe has an appreciation for these sets!

Edited to add: they used the exact same circuit design for both the US (later NTSC) and European CCIR (later PAL) sets. Switching between NTSC and PAL composite signals injected to the video amplifier grid, the sets will sync right up. I was really surprised by that!

ok sorry because i am only used to work on german tv sets and my english is not perfect...i know that the set is BW that i s very very obvious....
my question is the line frequency will be the same as our sets and it will accept video from my euro RF modulator in principle or it will be for 525 lines instead?
It definitely seems to be a European market set, but for reference.

I've seen other models of NTSC American sets bought by PAL region collectors who have been able to adjust the sweep circuits to run at the PAL rate (either by controls or changing RC time constants). The sound IF would need retuning for a modulator to supply sound...Other options for American sets are to buy a US market RF modulator and feed it PAL A/V so you don't have to adjust the sound IF.

hi guys

wiscojim thank you for seeing my crappy videos
i talked to bandersentv before buying the predicta through the comment section of one of his videos, maybe thats the reason he opened the topic on that forum, thanks for letting me know! if you like to see also my german tvs take a look on my uploads. cheers.

Hola AlanInSitges
i go alot to Spain on vacation nice to know there are neighbours with the same interests. you are welcome to stop by my place if you ever come to Portugal, i am in Porto, very beautifull city with excellent food.
the matr. sticker probably means "matricula" meaning serial number.
I will be uploading videos as i go along so please check my channel and maybe you can help me with some doubts that may arise. Its good to know that it syncs with both types of signals when injected at the grid of the video amp, atleast if the tuner is bad or the IF is misbehaving it can be used as a composite monitor but i would prefer to have it fullly operating. My knowledge is more on german sets (Philips mainly) but i think i will not have a problem tackling this one. Thank you for your input.

Electronic M thank you for your input...i think my order of business will be looking for a raster, then restoring the cabinet and clamshell and lastly restore the electronics in depth..i will want to rebuild the k-networks so i will probably need a help on the component values when the time comes for that.

Hugo you are of course welcome to stop by next time you're in Spain. I have a Philips from 1963 that I am afraid to even start on. :)

Alan in most late 50's and upwards philips sets you only need to replace the boost filter and you are ready to go, they use the yellow mustard capacitors wich do not fail with age and moisture.
electrolitics are also reliable
just pull off the cap of the horizontal output tube and power it up with a lightbulb in series...watch if the filter capacitors dont get hot and watch the power consumption with an ampmeter. if all looks ok give it full power

--------------------


the predicta has already showed me a raster after some temporary repairs
198329

so i turned my attention to the cabinet
it does not look the same does it?
I repainted the grille, polished the trim, repainted the gold around the dial, retouched and polished the wood cabinet.
after the cabinet i will do the electronic restoration
198330


i need a channel clunker knob ...anybody knows were can i find one?

Thanks Hugo, good to know!

That cabinet looks like a new set. It will be interesting to see how the chassis turns out.

The knob...those are very, very hard to find. They come up on eBay US once in a while, I think you just have to set up a search and wait.

hi to all!

more progress

arms and base are painted
lens and crt back are polished inside and out
tuner was cleaned inside and out and tuner tubes are tested
i am working on the broken back cover now, i have a new video uploaded to yt about that

meanwhile i would hope some of the american predicta experts could help me identify my chassis or atleast help me find my way to the nearest sams for this chassis, i will be needing that when i get my hands on the board
thank you

198335
198336

Several predicta schematics can be found here. http://www.earlytelevision.org/tv_schematic_diagrams_philco.html

Based on the rear control layout your set does not use a stock US market chassis so any US service info will be at best only partly applicable to your set.

thank you electronicM
i am working with the 10L41 schematic right now...the circuit is similar but the component layout on the board is very different so i cannot use the chassis pictures for component location... that is not an abosute need for me but its kid of a bummer.

apart from the board layout i noticed the following :

the rotary knobs on the top on the americans sets i think there are 3 of them
my set has 4

the range switch is non existant

i have a horizontal linearity coil wich appears to be non existant on the american models i have seen

bumblebee capacitors have the capacity printed on them instead of the stripes and there are no paper and wax capacitors.

the vhf tuner is not philco and the plastic shaft that usually wears out is steel

the flyback seems impossible to acess because the cage is spot welded all around

Some thoughts:
American sets did have a range switch, but it was a slide switch, not a knob.

The term paper capacitor in American TV restorer parlance is easily misunderstood...We really should say paper dielectric capacitor but we usually contract it to paper cap out of laziness. If your set uses American sourced capacitors you need to be careful. Most makes in the US used at least some paper dielectric caps into the mid-'60s. Paper dielectric is not always contained in wax-paper outer shells...As far back as the 40's we took paper dielectric capacitors and encapsulated them in bakelite and other plastics. The plastic encapsulated paper caps (like Bumblebees, back beauties, Sangamo Tiny Chief, etc.) are as bad or worse than their wax-paper encapsulated brothers. Even some of the early orange drop style capacitors had paper or a plastic-paper dielectric (those rarely leak current, but are prone to go open or drift capacitance) sandwich.


Some other US sets before and after the predicta did not put a door on their HV cages, but instead to access the fly and HV rect tube required you to unscrew the cage from the main chassis and remove the cage as a unit.

electronicM
thanks for the input..
my set doesnt have that range slider, maybe it has an AGC potentiomenter instead but i cant confirm that yet, i willl have to dig into the circuit first.

all of the film caps are gonna be replaced , the few that i removed for the first power up were completely garbage

i am aware that many use paper as dielectric, not just the waxies, to me the problem with general film caps degrading and becoming leaky is not the paper, its actually the outer insulation. take the example of the mullard mustard caps...i have tvs from the 50's with 30 or 40 caps of those and they all test perfect...i actually pull those caps out of old chassis to repair other sets because they are so reliable...also the ones that are plastic encased or epoxy dipped like erofoil II and WIMA rectangular plastic caps and others are very reliable and dont degrade with time.. but the wima brown drops for example are always shorted and heavily leaky and if you look at the outer insulation its also degraded and flaking.

Take the example of the mullard mustard caps

I believe those Mustards and many others you mentioned are early Polyester types, not paper ones.

hi everyone

i have about 1/3 of the board redone (the part on the right that looks clean)
i have been able to replace all components without removing or unsoldering the board from the chassis.. i just use a round tip iron and bent the tip slightly. so far no traces have been harmed etc..

some resistors are way off, some are marginal and some are spot on. but since they are cheap i am replacing them all
the black paper/film capacitors are a different story, they are all very leaky and off value but the white ones and the grey ones some of them are perfect, but they are also going to the bin.

all the tube sockets so far are fine and i will keep them
the tubes were very very very hard to pull off of the sockets, i was afraid because the board was flexing a lot when wiggling the tubes and pulling them

i have already remade the vertical feedback couplet. that was easy because it has the layout and component values drawed on the back.

the other integrators/couplets/networks have only a part number..putting it on google yields no results. i can identify them on the schematic by their position in the circuit but since my chassis has some variations on the circuitry i can be making the parts with wrong values. can anyone identify the integrators by their part number or point me in the right way please? that would be of a great help
for example one of them is labeled on the board as N3 and has the following code stamped on it: 30-6024-4

198356
198357

best regards
Hugo

There is a guy on the antique radio forum by the name of philcoDon that says he has all the diagrams for the integrators by part number but he seems to be inactive since 2015.

There is a guy on the antique radio forum by the name of philcoDon that says he has all the diagrams for the integrators by part number but he seems to be inactive since 2015.
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=177032483

.

i did not know about that i'm sorry

Today i removed the Phase comparer selenium diode to test it
it is 2 diodes wired with a common cathode
it seems shorted in either direction, it read almost zero voltage drop no matter how i test it, even backwards.
can someone tell me a suitable type of modern replacement? maybe 2 fast recovery diodes? 2 general purpose rectifiers?

Today i removed the Phase comparer selenium diode to test it
it is 2 diodes wired with a common cathode
it seems shorted in either direction, it read almost zero voltage drop no matter how i test it, even backwards.
can someone tell me a suitable type of modern replacement? maybe 2 fast recovery diodes? 2 general purpose rectifiers?

Schottky diodes will work fine. You can get a common cathode pair in a TO-220 case for about 1€ at Mouser.

There is a guy on the antique radio forum by the name of philcoDon that says he has all the diagrams for the integrators by part number but he seems to be inactive since 2015.

Crist Rigotti (here and there) has them all, and makes a replacement set that looks original for 40€ plus shipping. It costs about 55€ all-in to get them to Europe.

Hi alan
thanks. i have some good used dual schotky diodes with common cathode that i can use

i tried searching for the name you gave me but i could not find the guy, can you tell me how to reach him?40€ seems cheap but i want to make the parts myself i just need the layout for my part-numbers maybe he is willing to sell that information to me. I could dip the integrators i am making in epoxy and them paint them orange but i think i will have to troubleshoot alot until the tv works good so for now i will not paint them/dip them.

i have already done another integrator, it is the one on the sync separator. this one has the schematic drawn on the back and it is much more complex than the usual ones on the 10L43 chassis. it uses 8 components and has 7 legs.
the old one had 2 open resistors and one capacitor that measures nothing and somebody bridged a resistor across, it does not seem like a factory modification for sure, looks like some tech bypassed most of the integrator with a 1 meg resistor maybe just to make the set work quickly and dirty



here is the board almost finished
there are a couple of components still not replaced for example the 0,0039uf capacitor across the horizontal osc coil wich is a 10% rated part. i will have to place an order on mouser because i cant find that value locally and the value is crtical on that circuit.
i am also disassembling and cleaning the inside of all the pots. You would be surprised of the amount of crap inside those and just spraying them doesnt work very well. I disassemble them, clean them and bend just a little bit the contact points just to make them press a bit harder against the carbon trace and then i test them.

198368

here is the sync separator network already installed, yes i used some ceramic disk capacitors and i am not ashamed of that,just because i had them in my drawers and i dont think they will be hot enough to cause trouble in this area of the board ,also i dont think a slight drift will affect anything on this circuitry.
i also used some good used resistors that i had in my stash that measured spot on..i am all about convenience, i dont like waiting for parts if i have good reliable ones at hand.
198369

here is the back and its quite "complex"
198370

here is the old part wich is made out of individual components
198371

here is the back with the layout diagram
198372


i think i will do the horizontal integrator that couples the oscillator to the output tube and do a test run on the tv before doing the rest of the integrators.
the horizontal coupling is K7 on the sams for the 10L43 and it has the same part number than the one on my tv so i can do it without fear.
the other three are different part numbers...one of them is on the horizontal AFC area, the other one couples from the sync separator to the vertical osc and the other tiny 3 legged one seems some sort of retrace suppressor


i had already told you that this tv doesnt have the range switch but i found a point on the board labelled "range switch arm" and that point is connected directly to a b+ line
this tv also has a 1uf 50v non polarized cap going from an AGC voltage point to ground.

on most of my german TVs the boost voltage is in the order of 500 to 900volts and we have to use a special type of ac pulse capacitor, i usually go for the wima MKP series, and the manufacturers usually use 1kv or even 1,25kv rated parts.
on this tv the boost voltage is only 400v and the boost reservoir cap was a standard 600v part so i went with a 630v film cap. if that is not advisable please tell me, it is easy to change.

I'm here if you need the Networks. Just pm me.

Thank you very much Crist rigotti for the network information
unfortunately some information on the papers you sent me is not correct when it regards my networks
I was able to find a very very close schematic for my chassis wich even uses the same networks with same part numbers and same component layout... that chassis is the 11n51 and i found the schematic for it on Beitman publication of 1961.
Comparing my old networks with the beitman schematic everything is correct but on the sheet that Crist sent me there are a couple of typos, some incorrect cap values , some missing parts etc.

i have now finished recapping the board

here is the new vertical linearity pot 2watts wirewound and i put a 180ohm resistor in series to act as a stopper to avoid shunting the cathode direclty to ground accidentally if turning the pot all the way to one side. I may have to fit a bigger resistor if that one heats up we will see.
198408

here is an overview of the board with all the new components, you can also see i installed an overkill AFC diode. i used a welding machine double diode, its an ultra fast recovery diode, i used a massive one because it fitted directly in the socket without any modification and it was free
i did not replace the retrace suppressor integrator network yet, i think its not a critical part and i will replace it if i have problems with it
all the others i reproduced and replaced them all because most of them had resistors bridged across them on the bottom of the board indicating bodge repairs from the past
the 0,0039 cpacitor across the horzontal ringing coil was in very sad shape measuring twice the value so i replaced it and since i am going to have to tune the horizontal frequency for sure i went ahead and replaced the 390pf capacitor with a new silver mica 1kv part
198409

here is the back of one of the networks so you can see how i wired them up using solder to make traces
the goal was not to make an exact copy of the old part but to make a sturdy part wich is easily serviceable and modifiable if needed, the legs are made with thick 1.5mm copper so they dont bend and short to the chassis or other components
198410


when i first powered up the set before recapping i had a good raster for some seconds but then i started to see some arcing inside the damper and i shut off the tv thinking it was a bad boost capacitor. I dindt worry about that because it was going to be recapped fully...
Now after recapping the problem remained. arcing inside the damper and blue glow inside the horizontal output. the raster gets darker and breaks down into a zig zag pattern once the arcing starts. removing the top cap of the horiz output and reinserting it live makes the raster come back for a second and then it goes crazy again.....by looking at the horizontal output tube's getter it seems to me that the tube has some air in it. atleast my boxes full of pl36 and pl500 tubes all of them have shiny silver getters and this one is hazy and has some sort of blue colour on the edges.
i dont have any american tubes here so i placed an order for a new damper, horizontal output and a couple of spares for the vertical, audio and others.
i hope its not a problem on the flyback. i checked continuity and resistance of all the windings but that means nothing, nothing looks burnt and i did not see arcing on it and i did not smell any ozone. i think there is a high voltage ceramic disk cap on the horizontal yoke but i am unsure it would cause this and i dont want to mess too much on that area. lets see what happens when the tubes arrive.

meanwhile my flyback is part number 328951 and i am preparing for the worst, if it is bad i need to try and source something that i can fit in...i have rewired and fitted different flybacks on tvs before with sucess but those were german sets that i am used to work with.
when comparing this with other philco flybacks, besides the mechanical fittment this one has a winding separated from the others that goes to both plates of the 6by8 AGC gate/clamp and that winding seems to be absent on most philco schematics i have been looking at

here is the suspicious horiz output
198411

Investigating a little bit made me discover that my flyback can be replaced by the thordarson fly 222

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Thordarson-Fly-222-Horizontal-Output-Transformer-New-old-stock-tv-repair-part-/401476024832

found this one but the guy doesnt ship to here and he doesnt allow any contact to be made

i also did not have anything better to do so i removed the high voltage rectifier 1b3gt and replaced it with a selenium solid state diode (those white ceramic sticks used in 70's tvs) i used the anode wire and cup from another tv and the thing worked , no arcing or anything...the horizontal output kept glowing blue though...i also was able to draw good arcs maybe 8mm. the horizontal squeal seems a bit off of the usual frequency to my ears, maybe since the set had so many botched up parts they probably detuned the ringing coil preety badly to get it to work.

the plus point is that i have full screen vertical deflection at the first try.

what i need now is to go to bed because here its 2 o'clock in the morning and i need to keep my itchy hands off of the tv until the new tubes arrive!

That's looking good Hugo! I suspect maybe your set has a different or earlier set of couplates than the ones Crist is making.

If you need to buy the flyback on eBay, you can use http://www.skybox.net/ - it will be easier and cheaper, though it takes a little longer.

His set uses a later style of couplates used by Philco in the sets they made right after the Predictas like the 1961 Town and Country. It's fairly easy to unmount the old cylindrical resistors and mount new ones. The caps are ceramic and rarely go bad.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7830/47465537631_7f78bdd390_z.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2fjnhEt)

hi bob
hi alan

this is a page from the electronic technician magazine from may 1961
there you can see a 23 inch philco console with 11n56 chassis wich is virtually a 100% match of my chassis including part numbers and layout
198412

that couplate with the replacement resistors looks nice but mine were covered in some sort of goo or resin and some legs had been cut and ressoldered maybe as a diagnostic procedure by some tech so i didnt even remember or bother to try and save them. i did not throw them away though...i always keep the old parts in a bag stapled inside the tvs together with notes that i find relevant about the work done

about the flyback...i managed to get the set working with the selenium solid state HV rectifier stick so the flyback must be good but i will try that method you sugested (skybox) to buy that one on ebay, having a spare will bring me peace of mind.

Hi
good news and not so good news

the first powerup was somewhat sucessfull
the crt looks very strong, i have the brightness in the middle and contrast at 3/4.
the IF section seems to be working fine, although its strange that i have my modulator on channel 3 and can only tune it in on channel 5 on the tv...
sound is good even when there is lots of white content
the horizontal locks very well with the welding machine double diode
the vertical is not so great
i am having this foldover problem where the bottom part of the picture is missing and its appearing on the top of the raster. the raster is not centered on the screen and its not a problem of messing with the centering rings. i can fill up the screen by turning up the height control but the scanlines become huge and i loose vertical lock. also if i dont have a picture tuned in the raster fills up the screen
the video amp/sync separator tube is new and with the old one its the same
voltage checks on the vertical output/oscillator dont reveal any problem. all the voltages are preety much spot on
198433
on the yoke there is a black wire going to a metal wire that touches the screen aquadag...that is broken and makes the picture completely jumpy like when we loose vertical lock...bridging it with the black jumper wire seems to cure the problem but if i try to ground it to chassis the left side of the image collapses making a triangular shaped raster, very cool...i wonder if i have other broken connection or wire on the yoke causing the foldover...would it be possible? if so it would prevent me from chasing ghosts around the sync and vertical sections
there is an adjustable magnet on the left side of the yoke that has signs of abuse and the tube socket of the 6aw8a is also very abused, so it appears to me that someone ditched the tv because they could not fix this very problem...looks like i have a tough dog here, with me ususally its never the capacitors :)
198434
any ideas will be greatly appreciated


edit:
this is my scope on the pin 6 of the 6dr7
that is the plate of the vert oscillator
by looking at this i see the patient is suffering from serious heart disease...the drive is not linear, a wide pulse then a short one, then a wide one and so on, looks like it skips a beat every 2 cycles
the amplitude of the pulses looks ok , i am on 10x probe with 5v per division and the scope is not well calibrated so it seems decent to me. (maybe 120v PP)
what the hell can cause this???
198435

ok so i am getting there slowly i think


198436
my tv has an additional panel on the right of the chassis with 2 additional linearity pots for the vertical that are not present on the american sets and consequently not listed on the schematics that i have
capacitor c15 is absent on my tv and on its place there is a capacitor connecting to that said panel
removing that capacitor and putting a 4n7 capacitor on the position of c15 makes the foldover go away and the pulses for the vertical drive are looking very good now
now i just have a totally squished top on the picture

i am at the point where i am thinking of removing the two linearity pots and recreate the "american"style circuit, that has to work but i consider it cheating.
198437
here each cycle is completed in 20miliseconds and that is equal to 50hz so we are good. the sawtooth looks preety also with a very short fall time (perfectly vertical slope)
198438

I am almost done
just need to find were i put my test pattern dvd and play a little with the value of r27...on 17 inch sets philco seems to use a 100k, on 23 inch sets (11n56) they use a 68k, i will put a 82k
i am taking notes of all the changes i made until i find the proper italian schematic, if i do find it one day i can reverse all the mods and be able to use the extra 2 linearity pots.
i dont think it was me recapping the set that created this problem because i took pictures before the work and i have been comparing them and i did everything as it was...this tv had lots of repairs done and non original components. i think i am being lucky so far.

198439

Looks good!

Ditto!

thanks!
installing the 82k resistor on place of r27 brought the linearity to a very watchable level with very minor distortion
i will keep it like this and use it until i find the exact schematic
i have it running right now as i write

i spent some hours watching it today letting it run for half hour runs and checking the temperature of the flyback etc and i ran into a weird problem that i fixed by accident:
when dead cold, the tv would turn on and high voltage would kick in very fast, the raster would come on along with the sound etc.. but the horizontal would take about one minute to lock...before that you could play with the hold control and bring in a very faint picture with lack of contrast indication of low AGC or a weak tube in the IF...but after a minute or so the perfect picture would just pop in with good lock and good contrast...i repeated the test several times with different modulators both on UHF and VHF etc and the result was always the same...it took too long to get a good strong picture and as a consequence the picture would not sync, after a minute it would just pop in...

i was about to remove the IF tubes to test them when i remembered i was using the old gassy horizontal output that came with the tv...i installed it but was not expecting any improvement of course....installing the new one cured the problem...how weird is that??? now i turn it on and it takes 10 seconds to lock by itself after the raster appears...

the only thing i want to tweak before putting on the back cover is the slight buzz when subtitles or text appears on screen...since i watch a lot of movies and they are all in English i like the subtitles turned on and that bothers me a little..i dont have any buzz on my other sets.. i dont have the equipment to do an alignment , so is there a coil around the audio detector that i can tweak sligtly to try and remove some of the buzz? i dont want to play with all of them...
detuning the fine tuning gets rid of the buzz but i loose definition of the picture..on my German sets i fix that by lowering the AGC just a bit but this set doesnt have an agc adjustment

cheers to all

It can work because the line rate is almost exactly the same for NTSC and CCIR (15734 and 15625Hz). It's the vertical frequency that is quite different (59.94 and 50.00Hz).

I've read that the CCIR standards were purposefully chosen such that Europe's TV manufacturing industry could use USA-made flybacks off-the-shelf (flybacks have a resonant frequency - using an American or Continental European flyback in a UK 405-line set could burn the flyback).

I have a digital tuner box (ATSC 1.0) that offers 576i PAL CVBS video out. Every US set I've tried it on has no problem with horizontal sync. Some sets can be adjusted for vertical sync (usually with vertical distortions), while others won't sync at all.
50Hz flowing through the yoke when there is a transformer near it with a 60Hz field can cause the picture to shimmy as though the picture were formed on the surface of wobbling jelly!

[QUOTE=Robert Grant;3209895]It can work because the line rate is almost exactly the same for NTSC and CCIR (15734 and 15625Hz). It's the vertical frequency that is quite different (59.94 and 50.00Hz).

i guess i could turn on the set without a picture and see what the "free running" speed of the vertical is, just for fun...i will do that if i have to remove the chassis again.

do you have any clue as to why i put the modulator on channel 3 and can only tune in on channel 5? also if i put the modulator on channel 4 i can tune in on channel 6 and so on. this set uses a turret tuner and its different from the wafer tuner used in the American sets

[QUOTE=Robert Grant;3209895]It can work because the line rate is almost exactly the same for NTSC and CCIR (15734 and 15625Hz). It's the vertical frequency that is quite different (59.94 and 50.00Hz).

i guess i could turn on the set without a picture and see what the "free running" speed of the vertical is, just for fun...i will do that if i have to remove the chassis again.

do you have any clue as to why i put the modulator on channel 3 and can only tune in on channel 5? also if i put the modulator on channel 4 i can tune in on channel 6 and so on. this set uses a turret tuner and its different from the wafer tuner used in the American sets

IIRC different regions of the word that used CCIR/PAL (and for that matter different NTSC regions as well) used different channel frequenies from other regions. Some countries had FM in different places and planned TV arround it different, and places like the UK had competing TV standards like 405 squatting on some bands.
Your tuner probably comes from a different region from your source....That or your tuning knob is in properly indexed.