I came across this article on a website I've read a lot of over the years. It describes making a line cord resistor for US radios from electric blanket element. The element is combined with suitable figure 8 flex and covered with a shoelace to get the cotton-covered effect. This isn't something I'd be using but may assist others here.

https://www.cool386.com/linecord/linecord.html

Such cords are known in the USA as "curtain burners".

I have always wondered who came up with such a silly idea as a resistive line cord.

They were the cause of many house fires in the US. Thankfully common sense prevailed in Oz.

Geez!
Why not just series the electric blanket up with the radio?
Then you have TWO household items ready to go!
You can snuggle up in the blanket and listen to the top 40 at the same time.
Folks it's a WIN-WIN solution!!!!!!

O-M-G.
Any line cord, yank death trap radio should go right into the dumper bin where they belong.

Fred.

Suicide radio. Would be very dangerous if fell into the hands of a person whom did not know what it was.

Needs a modern cord and a dropper resistor added.

As I have written repeatedly:

AC/DC and Hot Chassis radios are not exclusive to USA as hot printed circuits and ballasts instead of transformers are not uncommon in Europe. One really needs an Isolation transformer with that stuff and I have before today wired one to take an "off set" PSU.

Floating the "Hot Wiring" wiring may have helped reduce risk, however, It does not alter the fact that they are intrinsically unsafe and hooking test equipment to them can be a challenge. I am no fan of hooking a metal chassis to the mains using a dubious cap & resistor and I have seen that here on transformer type equipment.

Its a fact that US safety across the board is not at the point of our Nanny State nor should it necessarily be. However, from a few European engineers who have done installation work there & here US workers are a worry.

Off topic a bit is the use of Hydrogen as a Rocket and Automotive fuel is madness. I have used it for under-water cutting (Acetylene will explode) and Hydrogen is one of the most dangerous fuels in existence. So if you have anything like a Vehicle or a Rocket using it, you have your own personal Hydrogen Bomb.

Yep, here is the classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Ly1Oh-xvs

I am hoping hydrogen doesn't go far in cars. Whilst it is certainly the most unstable material (and I am sure that I heard in chemistry class at school that it was due to it only having one atom) it doesn't store enough power to be useful as a fuel - meaning that your fuel tank has to be a big one to make a car produce the same power output as a petrol-powered car. So, like current battery technologies, it just isn't practical to make it safe, convenient and powerful at the same time.

In rockets, I reckon the same applies. The most powerful liquid-fuelled rocket engine ever made, the F1 used in stage 1 of the Saturn V rockets, burned kerosene instead of hydrogen. Wernher von Braun must have had something in the back of his mind there.

So much anger and ridicule...

The dropper wire idea is a way to make a specific type of radio work in its original manner. The deviser of the idea clearly recommends using an isolation transformer. I presented it here as we are about restoration of old radio gear. No one has commented on what I thought on was a really useful suggestion of using a wide flat shoelace to replicate cotton-covered power cord. I, like others here, have 2 or 3 old iron cords on hand for replica cords which I have thought about using clothing dye to darken/blacken.

My only experience with AC/DC valve radios was one I got from someone I delivered to on my after school hours chemist shop delivery job. It was a battery radio with a mains lead and no transformer. After about 2 minutes of looking at it when I got it home I realised/understood the Problem. I used it a resistor and capacitor source and still have the 1R5, 1T4, 1S5 & 3V4 in my valve box. The sad part is that 1 - 2 years later I found I could get half used radio batteries because I was then in the school army cadets' signals platoon, where we used WSA510s and CPRC26s, which I could have used to try it.


On the off topic of hydrogen:

https://www.coregas.com.au/news/2021/australias-first-hydrogen-powered-trucks-to-be-delivered-to-coregas-by-hyzon-motors

https://www.alstom.com/solutions/rolling-stock/alstom-coradia-ilint-worlds-1st-hydrogen-powered-train

This train would have comparable function the the NSW Xplorer or the VIC Vlocity trains.

Webmaster, why did the link in my original post appear as a link and the ones just posted here appear as text, contrary to what is in the Forum Instructions?

The Latter link will in time appear as a link.

Wernher Von Braun?

A contemporary piece of satire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

As long as links begin with http or https and they are not surrounded in parenthesis (brackets) as some people have a bad habit of doing, links will be converted by the site once a third party app scans the link for potential spam or inappropriate content and then does the hyperlink conversion.

This can take one second or several hours depending on what part of the database the app is scanning at the time the link is posted. The same process also corrects spelling and sends me an e-mail if someone is using foul language here.

Thanks Brad and Tallar Carl.