Model #F26020WN
Service #F26020WNF01
Serial #830621076
July 1988

Was visiting relatives recently and while watching this set (had actually fallen asleep) the picture went blooey.

Had nearly dozed off but was awoken by a sound similar to the degaussing when you turn it on. The picture displayed as below. Guess this never saw as much continuous hours of use until I ran it thru the wringer and that was the final blow to it.

Sometimes when I turn it off it won't! It took a couple of hits of the power button to make it shut down...weird! And when it does power down there's a strange squiggle of light only on the center of the screen (shaped a little like a question mark being whipped about). The other anomaly is that sometimes the raster loses all vertical and turns into a bright horizontal line.....needless to say I turned it off instantly when I saw that to prevent the screen from getting burnt.

Any ideas what may have failed.....is there a common failure to these models? The diagonal black bands in the upper right and lower left corners are a function of my camera and don't actually appear on the TV screen. Same thing applies to the moire pattern.
Thanks

Another screen shot. Black band and moire are from my camera and not displayed on the TV itself.

I think its haunted...-Sandy G.

Cold solder joints. Lots of them.

And ghosts.

-Ian

Well, as I said......the set had been on for several hours straight and I had sorta dozed off.....this TV probably has never seen this much continual use in it's life......I was awoken by a kinda pop noise and opened my eyes only to see a raster as pictured above.

Can cold solder joints exhibit in this manner? I mean can they just go "pop" like this? My feeble knowledge leads me to believe a component failure is more likely. Hopefully some of the resident RCA experts will share their thoughts on this. Thanks

look in the mst-??? module
its the tuner control and lots of bad solder joints in there.
a few larger caps go bad in there too.

I doubt that the set used an MTT Tuner,I think it is probably a ctc-146. Most likely, that problem is because the video buffer transistor has shorted, or the +200 volt line has taken a dive.In any case, it is NOT hard to diagnose-- IF you are somewhat familiar with tv sets.

Thanks Jack. Dunno what CTC it is, that's why I included all the info from the label in the very first post. The set is at my relative's house in Phoenix some 800 miles from me. They're in the market for a larger set but would like to possibly have this one repaired too as this is the first problem they've ever had with it.

I just wanted to arm them with some info so that they may be able to assist the repair shop as it's likely that they've never seen a set of this vintage....seeing as how today's shops are more of the "it'll cost more to repair it than it's worth" variety.

Does anyone know of any reputable shops in the Mesa/Phoenix area? Any suggestions as to brand or model of a 32" ish tube set? They don't want to go plasma or LCD as they're too damn pricey. Aren't today's current RCAs pretty decent?

if you heard a pop, check the caps.

Also, like jack said, there is a luminance transistor in there that will short and cause heavy retrace lines, possible shutdown from excess current draw.

I had a portable one do that.

Thanks.....would that also cause it to lose all vertical? This did happen once or twice. And as I said earlier, when I turned it off there was a strange trace on the screen that was a bright line that kinda whipped around near the center of the tube, looked a little like a question mark being thrown about. I think this only appeared when I shut it off right after I lost all vertical.

My relatives are going to have someone check it out shortly and are considering buying a new flat screen RCA....either a LCD or Plasma....they're not sure what it is although it IS one of the thin jobs that you can hang on the wall. What's the consensus of opinion on the quality of these as opposed to other brands? They're not big time TV watchers but they do want something a little more high tech for the living room. Of course they want something reliable and hopefully long lived. Thanks again.