It has been a long time, a couple of years I think, since I have carried out a full restoration of a radio and I think it is time to get back into it. The subject at hand is an Airzone Cub, model number 41A1A from the late 1940s, a model I have restored before as per this article though on this occasion the particular radio comes in the more commonplace Bakelite cabinet.

The pictures do a little too much justice to this radio at the moment. The radio is complete with its original knobs and the cabinet is free of cracks and other damage. This is where the good news ends though. The cabinet is filthy and needs a good cleanup followed by polishing. The power cord came with the radio but for safety I have cut it off so that it cannot be used until serviced. The Bakelite plugtop has been removed from the other end of the cord and has been retained. It will be cleaned and polished, then fitted to the new cord at the conclusion of the restoration.

This radio was recently acquired via an Ebay auction. The cabinet is a light cream colour and should come up well in response to the scrubbing it will get. I should mention that the previous owner took great care with packing and it is just as well. Urea-based Bakelite is not as strong as the phenol-based Bakelite that brown and black radios are made of and this will be remembered when cleaning is carried out.

The chassis will get the usual wholesale replacement of condensers plus replacement of off-spec resistors, insulation test of the transformer and other electrical safety checks. The valves and dial lamp will be checked for good operation as well.

In a couple of weeks I hope to have found the time to get this radio back to working order. Success will provide the inspiration to carry out another restoration over the Christmas break.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Success will provide the inspiration to carry out another restoration over the Christmas break.

I thought the Currawong amplifier project had first dibs on the Christmas break, or have you built that already?

Things got in the road of that this year. The Currawong will be 2016 project I reckon.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Good luck with that radio.

I have a similar Airzone, appears to be the same physical size, with the front laid out exactly the same. The cabinet is a different pattern, being smooth instead of those grooves yours has.

There was a later version with deeper ribbing that ran around the left side. The chassis was the same except that it was fitted with baseless valves. It came out around 1950.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

My hands-on techy life began with one of these at age 13. It was given to me by a neighbour not working after apparently having had a fall. (My Dad had been building tuners and amps since his mid teens and designed and built various other things in his work as a physicist so help was on hand. This one was MINE though).

The green case was cracked and had pieces missing and was eventually discarded. The initial fault was a wire off in the mains plug, a 'modern' plastic one which someone had terminated without using the strain thingies. The twin flex was replaced with three core and it worked.

Various 'improvements' and other experiments were inflicted on it as I attempted to identify one or more stations on each 10kHz slot.

Thanks for the reminder.

There was a later version with deeper ribbing that ran around the left side. The chassis was the same except that it was fitted with baseless valves. It came out around 1950.

Yes you are right. Just shows how the mind plays tricks. Someone stuck a huge wall switch on the side and cracked the cabinet in the process. When I received it, the speaker transformer was blown, so I substituted the only spare that fitted. For a 4-valve set, it works surprisingly well, with just half a metre of antenna wire. It currently resides on the bedside table.