1962 RCA B&W Portable

[DavGoodlin]

What is the KCS number stamped on the chassis? 121?

I have an RCA Monochrome (Tab Book) service manual that may give a clue to the width issue. I vote for a weak tube or leaky tubular cap off the damper tube.

BTW, I have tons of those odd series-voltage tubes. PM me if you need any.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

The point I was making is that if that history classroom has lower line voltage you get less sweep width/height, and if it has more you get more.

You can see this effect in action if a large appliance on the same circuit like a fridge or central A/C kicks on or off while you are watching the set...You will actually see the image grow or shrink and brightness change in step with it.

There is an industrial park roughly a mile away from me and I presume they have a device that can dip the grid a few volts and back a couple time a second continuously (since a while back that was a regular occurrence)...Once is interesting, but continuously can become annoying real quick.

There was probably other problems on the line.
Industrial complexes of any size, generally have their own feeders, directly from the large substation and are usually independant of residential and small commercial.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by TUD1

My line voltage was actually 118 on the dot. I checked. If I run the window A/C or the space heater, it gets down to 105. I don't think I have this set's horizontal output tube in my tube box, but I'll check.

As I mentioned in a previous post, that line loss should be addressed. A Twelve volt drop with a load of around 12 amps is entirely too much, even though the circuit is probably only 15 amps.
Do you ever trip the breaker or blow a fuse for that part of the home?
There's so many different areas to check.

[TUD1]

I can't remember ever tripping the breaker. I think this set is a KCS-138, but I could be wrong.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by TUD1

I can't remember ever tripping the breaker.

For openers, remove all the loads from the circuit and flip the breaker on and off a few times. After that, check the voltage with the heater load. If improved, maybe the breaker should be replaced.