Hi JMB!
I thought my eyeballs had failed!!
Not to worry, I'll photoshop the pix with a bit of sharpen up, and pop on my close up specs.
Sometimes if you back up away a tad, and 1/2 frame the image will fall into the focus point.

Wow!
That set is a master class in packing it all in.
I count 4 valves?
Let us know what type they are please.
So far it looks like a TRF, cannot see any IFT.

Replacing all the caps and res with modern types will free up a lot of space underneath and make it very tidy.
A power up with current limiting with a 100 watt bulb in the mains cord could be possible, no way would you power it up straight from the mains. The electros need re-forming and that take a couple of minutes of gentle power!
A fast power up will over heat the caps and magic smoke will issue.
Would be advisable to at least ohm meter check the primary winding of the PT to the chassis and make sure it is not leaking to frame.

Very interesting little set.

Fred.

Hello Fred the images are out of focus because My hands shake to the point it is now difficult to do any sort of repair work at all. The suggestions you made are basically what I do anyway. I think your email is available so I will send you the circuit .I will email it to Brad he maybe able to include it in the post. The net results will be a long way off what you guys do . My workmanship now is shamefully poor especially as I was able to repair surface mount stuff a decade ago. I am not sure if I want to post pictures of the chassis underside after I have completed it for this reason. The circuit is very unusual and will be of interest to our members.
Should I start a new post in technical or will it be ok to continue where it is in general discussion.
I do not want to upset the formatt.
Kind Regards Jim.

Fred I have had several attempts to email this circuit to you.I think they have all failed the printer scanner I am using does not like Windows 10 so I have to scan everything through a program called Vuscan it used to work fine however no longer will it scan to email.
If I try to email it from my documents that evil Adobe says it can't link to my email address so I have to use the share option which sends it in some stupid cloud thing which I do not understand and to be honest I don't want to understand. I just want things back as they were an ability to scan to email.
Regards Jim.

Jim, just use the Attach File function in your email program. If you can send an email you can attach a file to it....

Thank Ian

If it’s not too much of a hassle Jim, can I have a copy too?

Hi Jim, yep circuit came ok!
Nicely drawn.
Will get back to you later.
Fred.

Thanks Fred.

Hi Jim, nice little TRF.
Very straightforward and should work well in a city situation with a medium wire antenna.

I see a bit of care taken about the AF section, the designer used degeneration to control the gain, no bypasses on the 6V6 and 6SN7 cathodes.
May have had a stability problem there if let rip full gain.
The detector is an Anode bend / diode type very interesting.
The selectivity is all up to the two tuned stages and the Q of the coils.
Those coils look like slug core types so thats a plus.

When you change the caps you will need to add a 0.1 across the HT line 140v and possibly another on the 45v line.
The volume control shifts the 6K7 about on its gain slope, that may be part of the stabilisation tactic of the design.
Full bottle gain in the RF section may be touchy, hence using gain control there for volume and not a pot in the 6V6 grid.

No not a "Little General" that has to be a superhet.
More like a "Little Jim" or a "TRF 4".

Nice.

Fred.

If you have shaky hands & mine are getting to the point where they have issues welding. The tripod is not dead. I have always mounted dedicated cameras on a tripod. There are settings on some electronic cameras & the film Nikon's & Bronica had depth of field gauges on the lens barrel. There is such a thing as too close & the camera will not focus. Depth of field also becomes shallow.

Auto focus is not always you friend, nor is flash. It is often better to get back a bit and use paint, or image editor, to crop. Focus manually on the centre of the subject. The higher the "f" stop the better the depth of field and that also improves if you are not too close.

All one big compromise but....

Thank you all for your comments and constructive criticism .it will be a few weeks before I can get into this.
This is the only TRF I have owned so it is a bit special. The constructive criticism of my photographic efforts were well and truely correct.
I do not/ have a bells and whistles camera,however I do have a small tripod and the camera does have a timer function. I played with these today and yes I can achieve a much better result ,so thank you.
Brad! Sorry about those rubbish blurred pictures I will be able to do better in the future.
Kind Regards.
Jimb.

Little General Circuit Diagram

Document uploaded to Post 26.

Had a good look at that circuit.

It's novel, I'll say that for it! The way the gain control is done is a bit unexpected. The other side of the pot is usually used to short out the antenna at minimum volume, not the B+ to the anode bend detector and 1st audio...

I've always disliked anode bend detectors. Far too much distortion with today's transmitters.

R&H came up with a much cleverer circuit at about that time. It was a superhet with only two valves. The 2nd was a twin triode. One IF transformer followed by a regen detector using one triode. The other was the audio output. Very simple and apparently worked very well.

There was an update released when the ECL80 first appeared, replacing the twin triode and giving increased audio gain and power output.

I'll probably never do it, but I've often thought the 6Y9 dual pentode could be used to make a decent 2 valve receiver, with respectable gain and power output and AGC to boot.

The 6Y9 was a common TV valve in the late 60s so there are a lot of them still around. It even appeared in some early PAL colour TVs. Here is the datasheet for the series heater equivalent:

https://frank.pocnet.net/sheets/010/p/PFL200.pdf

If anyone has a Kriesler 11/99 with a smashed-or-otherwise-beyond-redemption cabinet it would make a good test bed for the idea. Transconductance numbers look interesting, maybe I won't need to reflex it!

6Y9 is not the problem; getting the correct socket is.

The day is getting closer to me starting this project now I have repaired his STC 141A. I want to finish off a partly completed AM mini transmitter for him first so he can put his radios to good use.