Some of those bullet ended grid leak resistors are repairable. Often the ends will come off, one tins them, then drills a 1mm hole in them (Lathe good) and replaces the core with a resistor.

Care must be taken if the barrel can be melted. One end can be soldered first, then offered to the barrel & solder wick can make compressible braid.

Marc

Photo uploaded to Post 14.

One of the old blokes in the radio club in WA had a box full of Pilot parts

Great find indeed!

VERY Interesting this post re Pilot Super Wasp & I totally missed the original post & subsequent others. HOW did I manage that??

I have a very nicely restored Battery operated model which is why I bought one of Ian Robertson's great battery eliminator kits.

The radio was in my parents house when they bought it in East Fremantle in the 1960's & because it was so old & not working it got moved out into Dad's workshop in case I "might" like it as at that time I was working in the bush for the PMG.
It thus ended up in my shed wrapped up in plastic to keep dirt & dust out of it for a number of years & when we made a recent move closer to the city the radio was shifted to my current shed. But alas the bloody rats had been at it & a lot of rodent gnawing had really wrecked some of the components ..not to mention their urine creating large unwelcome rust spots & corrosion everywhere it was almost a wreck.

I decided that I would not bother trying to restore the thing as I had other projects to deal with & attempted to sell it as I considered it was worth restoring being so old but everyone who enquired to my ads turned up their noses as it had NO Brand name on it so was deemed "Worthless" to any collector etc.

An acquaintance of mine who is a member of the local WA radio club expressed an interest & he gleefully took it off my hands as both he and I had NO idea as to its origins apart from a tiny label inside one of the coli boxes lids that read :
Tests OK: & Signed looks like "Gill", Serial No: E229.45A Date: 14/10/25, Coil No:310E9b274. By this time it was very frail & crumbled in two but I managed to glue the 2 bits together onto a piece of card so we have preserved that intact.

Interesting was that one of the coupling transformers was labelled RADIX who is/was a local WA transformer maker but whether they went back to 1925 we are unsure & suspect that it may well have been a replacement for an original failure at some stage.
Anyway he took it away & started drawing out the circuit but we already knew the valve line-up as being a 32, 30, 30 finally the output being the old trusty 31.

The cabinet was quite substantial & in reasonable nick so he worked on that rubbing it back & re varnishing the lot whilst he also did some research looking over old newspaper adverts etc & finally discovered it was a Pilot Super Wasp battery model & the attached picture shows an advert inserted in a local paper as well as the Kalgoorlie Miner from 1930-31. This was by Harringtons who had outlets all over Australia & in particular in Perth at 28 King Street. Harringtons also handled Australian made cinema projectors & accessories such as film rewinders of which I have one still in use today.

I digress...my friend managed to get the old set going & it turned out to be quite a good performer but he only had the one set of coils being broadcast band only & further research confirmed that the Pilot Super Wasp published circuit drawing was EXACTLY as he had traced out.
So this one is indeed a Pilot Super Wasp battery model about to have an Ian Roberston battery eliminator AC power supply tucked in the spacious rear to enable us to still enjoy tweaking the knobs to make it go!!

It had ended up back with me as my friend is in a small unit & the size of the cabinet was bit much for his available space that he had to display his small but interesting collection of radios.

So I now wonder what this Super Wasp is now worth & besides this advert sheet I will Email Brad a couple of pics of the restored radio.

Lindsay

They must have been popular in WA.

Looks like yours started out as a K-115 but it has been modified since. I wonder if Harrington’s modified it.

I have cleaned up the chassis. Notice the use of brass eyelets for the single wire penetrations on the chassis.

The front panel is not too bad and I don't want to attempt to clean it anymore in case I damage the paint.

Both the Output and Coupling Transformers were open circuit so I had to repair them.

Great job Kakadumh!