Hoffman 600 scare

[frenchy]

I was redoing the cable and digital tuner hookups to my old '50 Hoffman 600 b/w tv yesterday, and while I had it on and working fine, all of a sudden the screen went dead. By the time I spun it around to look thru the back, I was smelling the scary stench of burning plastic. Then even scarier I saw orange flickering shining thru the HV cage onto the inside of the cabinet! Boy that really spooked me thinking about the whole set flaming up and me trying to lug it out of the house before it burned it down. But when I turned it off fortunately the apparent flame went out quickly.

So I thought well well, my first fried flyback. Luckily it turned out to be something simpler - one of the wires that led to one of the tube's cap connections (the HV rectifier tube I think) had cracked, and it was arcing against the HV cage where the wire was touching it. Wrapped up the insulation break (and most of that wire just in case) with plenty of layers of electrical tape and all is well again. : )