Whispering Death, the Bristol Beaufighter.

Yep! poppet valves went bang when they opened the sleeve valve didn't. These were not the same sleeve mechanism as the Knight engine. They worked the opposite way. As a conventional got hotter it lost power & as the sleeve valve got hotter, it gained HP.

New post on STC

About all I could remember about it. According to Wiki, "whispering death" was not used by the Japanese and is attributed to a British journalist.
Nevertheless a great weapon, serving in many roles starting as a night fighter during the Battle of Britain, through to anti shipping and ground attack by the RAAF. Some made in Oz. Not as fast as the Mosquito, but plenty of room for radar and weapons.

Back to the KL Mickey!
I got some shed time in and did the first fit up of the chassis and made it work as a radio.
I'll send a "part two" to Brad where I detail the steps in getting it going.
We have the normal description with plenty of pix of waveshapes.

This set came without a dial or cabinet but still has some pulleys and string on it.
The handbooks forwarded to me dont show a stringing diagram.
I have used my imagination and strung a string around the pulleys that runs across the top of the speaker plate and when driven by the tuning spindle logically make a pointer run back and forth.
One of the pulleys is pivoted and looks like it should be a spring tensioner?, but thats a guess.

Anybody have a photo or diagram of how a KL is strung?

The next step will be to manufacture a cabinet of some sort and a dial plate.
I could just forge ahead and make my own version of what the factory may have made or maybe somebody has a busted old cabinet and dial I could fix up?
Or, Maybe I could make a "prototype" box to put it in and spray it that BLUE colour?
Then in could put it on ebay and ask 1400 dollars for it?
Sorry Astor fans i'm only kidding!

Will send PDF to Brad.

Cheers Fred.

Restoring a 1947 KL Astor Mickey, Part 2

Fred, if you could borrow a cabinet from someone (anyone??) you could make a two part silicone rubber mould and cast a new case in epoxy. I have used this technique successfully to make knobs. Unlike the originals the replicas are unbreakable.

THEN paint it! Or put some colour in the clear epoxy.

There's a place at Rockdale that has all the materials you need to make this work. If you want to try this I'll look them up for you.

Of course, 3D printing is possible but who wants to draw that case? I use Fusion360, it's possible, but a few days work.

The service bulletin is on Kevin Chants site:

Catch 22: No dial stringing. New spring is available from an engineering supplier CSW T12. So one may become highly strung working it out. However, I find it reasonably simple and remember the cordage may have to do almost a complete lap of the drum score.

Draw pic of the dial mark HI & LO and the pulleys & driver as a layout diagram (see another drawing) and one should be able to work it out from there. If you can cable the three on a HMV 5101 that ones simple. Start with gang fully open or closed.

Do not use mono filament fishing line, 5101 had that (among others) and piano wire: Abject FAIL.

I have strung the dial to my design using the pulleys exisiting. Works ok.
I'll post up a photo of the left top pulley, which is pivoted and has a set of teeth on one end of the swinging bracket the pulley is mounted on.
This must be a tensioning device?
I will add a small spring to pull the bracket into tension.

The rest of the assembly must have been part of the cabinet.
Does anybody have an Astor with a similar tension device that can clue me into how the factory did it?
Fred.

Photo uploaded to Post 37.
Document uploaded to Post 34.

I started to mock up a cabinet, but then got diverted by changing the 6B8 IF valve to a 6AR7!
As usual I got into a bit of a mess, mainly with the IF trannys, but worked my way out again.
I have a feeling the IF trannys are both damaged mechanically from the set being dropped and rolled around.
The top core on one has been pushed down level with the top of the can and the bottom core jams probably from broken bits inside the tube.
Nothing can be done about it to "fix" it easily, so I found a way around the problem as you will read.
The net result was the 6AR7 does work better than the 6B8.
I'll send the usual PDF for Brad to attach to this post.
Fred.

Restoring a 1947 KL Astor Mickey, Part 3

From memory the tensioner was a spring, which is easy to source, bought some for the 5101 HMV recently. Might get to it again seeing that I sent the STC 236 home today.

Don't know if the diameter is suitable but I have a pile of NOS ferrites with the threaded rod?

I may have something on that tensioner?

Marc

Hi Marc, I used a spring out of my spring box hooked one end over the teeth and stretched it behind the speaker to bolt onto the top speaker bolt.
That puts a bit of tension onto the swinging arm and keeps the string taunt.
That works ok.
Still like to find out why on earth the arm has teeth on it!
Maybe that part was a stock item used in different dial assemblies and the teeth on those engaged with some other doo dad?

Fred.

I would expect, as it is a lever this to relate to moving the eye of the spring to get more tension.

At that sets age it could have been a whatever was available job. I have found 6A8, 6J8, 6K8 & ECH35 all in one another's spot. In an Astor JJ and a couple of others, using a 6J8 instead of a 6A8 will cause the band to be compressed and into LW at the low end.

The internals of the 6A8, 6J8 & 6K8 are quite interesting. 6SA7 is wildly different & does not behave like any of the other pentagrids and is the only one that AGC does not destabilise on SW.

6K8 will have a lower Cathode resistor (250 Ohms rather than 300 for the other two) and 15K to the Oscillator plate instead of 20K plus the 8μF cap to stop flutter.

Marc

Document uploaded to Post 39.

G'day Fred,

You have a point regarding the descriptions of certain radios on Ebay. The problem here (and it is a big one) is Paypal, who most often side with the buyer when there is a dispute over whether or not the description matches the item that is on offer. So those simply claiming that a radio is in mint condition will likely get some grief from a buyer who is a bit on the pedantic side.

I've had this happen to me, although strangely enough it was regarding the chassis, not the cabinet. As it turns out, the radio was an old one - 1931 or thereabouts, but the chassis was a replica. That said, I was unaware either way, not having made a study of the radio, so I was careful not to use the word "original" or any trickery, but the buyer still moaned like a lady of the evening about it and I just gave them a full refund to shut them up and preserve my feedback score. The radio was then sold to someone who was a bit more grateful for what they received.

The bottom line was, yes it was true that the radio wasn't original though there was no claim that it was. It also sold for less than what an all-original one would have sold for. Its horses for courses - which you, I and all reasonable people understand though there's no convincing some people.

I still buy off Ebay but have stopped selling since soon after that incident. It's not worth the bother with dealing with crackpots who just want to grizzle and mess people about, especially since I was offering personal delivery for any sales here in Sydney.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, I don't have an Astor cabinet in stock otherwise I'd be pleased to see it marry up to the chassis you have there.

Hi Brad.
Wow! A replica of a radio chassis.

I dont know much about the radio scene and did not think about people making replicas of rare radios.
I dabble in Australian coins, that is rife with "replicas/fakes/study items" simply because of the price levels that some coins achieve.

I guess that somewhere there would be oily types knocking out rare cabinets and chassis and passing them off as the real thing.
Sounds like a lot of work, but then, just like coins, if we are talking about 1000's $ I can see the motivation.

For that reason I always glue a dated "fred lever" nameplate/sticker on all my radio builds so there is no mistake where it came from.
I know these can be removed but you would need a chisel to do it!

I guess experience and knowledge are the keys with any hobby and picking duds.
I carried on a relentless campaign regarding fake 1930 Australian pennies peppering the industry with magazine articles concerning the coin. Along with a couple of other like minded collectors we succeeded in removing all the dodgy fake sellers off eBay, or at least forced them to be specific with their descriptions, no more "found in grandmas sewing machine" (provenance) "possibly genuine" (from china last week) "make your own mind up" (its a fake!).

Possible the radio hobby needs the same treatment?

Fred.