1978 RCA Colortrak & 1995 GE CTC-177-reliable sets?

[Jeffhs]

I have an RCA CTC185A7 (model #F19261), bought new seven years ago. RF port for antenna snapped off the tuner PC board twice not long after I bought the set, but after the second repair it worked great, and continues to do so to this day. The onboard tuner idea was a bad one, but once the ground connections are resoldered properly you won't have any more trouble--from that, anyhow (if your tech gets to the problem before it messes up the EEPROM programming; besides, once this problem is identified and repaired properly, the set is likely to go for years with no further problems, as the OB tuner was probably one of the biggest trouble spots these sets had). I think RCA/Thomson must have gotten the message a few years later, as all their current sets are built with the tuner well separated from the main PC board. They probably get far fewer callbacks for tuner problems now. I can't help wondering why they didn't do it this way from the beginning.