Its not just drifting. The stations disappear and appear further down. but not far down. The components are over 50 years old so recapping is in order any way. By disappear I mean instantly disappear.

I'd be looking at the caps & resistors in the local oscillator. There's not many, you may as well just change the lot.

From the last explanation we don't have drifting we have "jumping" and the most likely thing, which is rarely the valve, is a dud cap in the oscillator circuit or a bad joint. Mica ones in the older sets often cause that and its often one with high voltage on it and in a place where it can throw the oscillator off frequency. I doubt that a ceramic would behave that much differently.

I don't have apprentices, so as one knows that 99.9% of the paper caps, will leak like sieves. Leaking positive onto valve grids has a devastating effect on bias. I don't treat hobby fixes (not done often) any differently than commercial fixes. Experience tells me what has to go, so no pussy footing around, its ruthless efficiency.

I know from Aviation & as a textile dyer that I am not colour blind, Mum was affected in the red area. She was an Artist & I often ended up matching colours for repairs & when they were in bad area of the spectrum for her.

If you cannot match against a colour chart then its a case of checking with a meter. Do note that many resistor cannot be reliably checked when they are in circuit; Plate & control grids not so much, but if an in circuit resistor tests high it is likely to have gone out of spec. Printed circuit tracks, do crack as does the solder where there is heat. Eg around the valve socket, Pay particular attention to that and switch contacts.

Note the cap next to R13: That looks like it's snapped off.

I think you mean to say R133 and that pigtail does look to be disconnected (unless it's an optical illusion).

Hell I had not noticed that capacitor. It definitely looks broken. I will have a good look when I get home from work.

GTC that pigtail was a optical illusion , I just checked it and what you can see as a pigtail is actually just poked back up through another hole lol I thought I was barmy.

A picture may be worth a thousand words -- but only if it's not deceiving.

I take it you have cleaned band switch contacts with a suitable cleaner.(I use white spirits on an artists tiny paint brush).
Seeing good contact cleaner is hard to get these days.
And reseat the valve sockets. (pull out valves and reinsert them to sort out contact problems).
JJ

^ good advice. I've been side-tracked by such things.

I use CRC contact cleaner.

It looks very much like I will have to replace the valve socket. I cant get under it to tighten the contacts as it mounts directly onto a circuit board. Is this a easy job do you think?.

Is this a easy job do you think?

Removing the socket from the board shouldn't be difficult if you have a good solder sucker.

Once the chassis is out of the case you should be able to get to it.

Sockets can be sourced from Evatco, and eBay.

Well I have sourced 4 sockets from Evatco at a very reasonable price. And bought three 9 pin Vacuum Tube Socket saver bases from eBay. They look to be a very usefull device.

Socket savers are useful for valve testers when you are using the same socket to test a batch of valves.

Well people the Nordmende lives. All the problem was , was the valve socket being a little dodgey. I took it to my mate around the corner and he got his tools out ( one had a hook on it ) and he got in behind the sockets and tightened them up and it now runs faultlessly. I only had to replace 3 capacitors as well. The components in this radio are all original except those 3 caps such is the quality of these german radios.