[Chad Hauris]

You can do alignment by ear. Just take the weakest station the set will pick up and follow the order of the adjustments in the Sams. Once that station comes in strong, then tune in another weak station and repeat adjustments. It's important to work with a weak station so you can hear the difference you make as you adjust. You can use this method for AM and FM. On FM as a final step adjust the discriminator or ratio detector stage for best sound quality. You shouldn't have to adjust it too much.

I have had to use an RF generator though when a set was so messed up that I couldn't pick up the local station at say 550 khz and had to generate a very strong test signal so I could start adjusting.