If I recall correctly, I went to the 2011 ETF meet looking for either a Zenith Porthole or a projection set. I believe that the auction was just starting when I arrived. I bid on, and won a small Emerson projection console that I was disappointed to find was missing it's protelgram projection unit. I was busy looking that over as the auction went through some isles I had little interest in, and soon it moved to where the zenith was. I was a ways off as the porthole went up for bidding, and got there just after it got passed. I made an offer 10$ lower than the price it passed at to the auctioneer, and got a counter 5$ higher which I took (paid 20$ for it
).
Not long after the auction my friends Nick and Mark (Miniman82 and Zenithfan1 respectively) tested out the CRT in the Porthole and found it to be dead. Mark brought the tester (Sencor CR-71) and Nick figured out the universal adapter. I recall Nick saying they thought they had the connections wrong because the needle on the CR-70 would not budge. I'm surprised that Nick helped because he had just won a 21-CT-55, and anything that awesome is difficult for one to pull one's own attention from (in his shoes I sure would have cared more about that 21-CT-55). They left it to cook at increased filament voltage for a few hours. I was disappointed to have what seemed to be two sets that would need hard to get parts. I could not fit both sets in the C-RV so I decided that if the porthole's CRT did not respond to rejuvenation I'd sell or give it to whomever wanted it and take the projection set. At least two people said that they either had a spare protelgram or that it would not be tough to find one, so given how difficult to find and sought after 16" metal CRTs are, if both sets NEEDED new CRTs (a protelgram unit contains the CRT and most of the projection optics) the Emerson's would have been easier to get. After the presentations the tube was checked again and had gone from 0 emission to bad emission. Some more cooking and a cleaning on the CR-70 and the emissions with the filament above spec voltage were in the good range and at spec filament were in the bad range.
That made up my mind that the porthole was coming back home with me. I sold the Emerson the next day and returned home to Wi. Sometime after I arrived I put the set in the garage, and eventually got to testing it.
The pencil box door was (and still is) gone, the audio output tube was MIA, and the volume knob was gone(I got one from a good person over at ARF soon after). Aside from the replacement signal tubes, the brightener, and 3-5 brown drops from (I'd guess) a 60's-70's repair it was completely stock.
Since one of the pins on the chassis half of the safety interlock is busted I had to rig up a make shift "idiot killer" cord. I connected it to a variac and brought it up to voltage VERY slowly. I was rewarded with a raster, and cold lytics. I say cold because it was spring jacket weather and the garage it is in is unheated.
After the initial raster was (unexpectedly) obtained I either connected a handy VCR during that power up or did so during the next power up. Figuring "the lytics are cold...what the heck lets see how much it can do" I connected the VCR and tried CH3......Nothing. So I switched the VCR and TV to CH4 and had video. After adjusting the brightness, contrast, and hold controls I had a surprisingly good picture (see photos)!
I had ran the set no more than 20 min on the longest of several power ups up to this point. I found a spare audio output tube and next power up watched the better part of Star Wars IV, with good sound, on the old girl with only a pinch of control tweaking throughout the 1.5+ hour I ran it, and the lytics were still cool at the end!
I haven't really run it or worked on it since then. It's speaker grill, cabinet, and mask are slightly worst than the set in the first post BTW. It will be awhile before school and other things permit me to start working on it again. Part of me would like to leave it as is to show just what rugged reliability Zenith put in to it.
Zenith the quality stays in (even) after the name falls off!