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The Wireless Connection
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To Basics: by Peter J. Bertini |
Photo A. Harold’s Iceberg White RCA Victor model RJD-10Y clock radio. This radio would be right at home in any retro 1960’s-era bedroom or kitchen! |
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“Harold’s got to be pulling my leg!” These were my first thoughts when the package containing his mom’s “vintage” radio arrived for restoration. Yet, there it was, carefully double-boxed and encased in bubble wrap, a very common mid-’60s plastic clock radio. A 1965 RCA Victor, model RJD-10Y to be precise. Photo A shows the radio. It’s nothing that most collectors would give a second look at. Could this be the vintage radio we’d discussed on the telephone the week before? Then it dawned on me: 1965, the radio is almost 40 years old! A young teenager in 1965 would be around 50 years old today. Sigh. Tempus fugit and all that stuff. Harold’s kitchen radio was indeed vintage column fodder as Harold had suggested. Besides, it’s a good vehicle for us revisit restoration basics, things I may have taken for granted that beginners were familiar with. I’ve noticed that the prices of many of the common Bakelite radios from the late 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s are going up, especially for sets in excellent, original condition. Many collectors like these simple radios because they often work fine with a simple recapping, new dial string, and general cleanup! You don’t have to be an electronic techie to successfully get 95 percent of them working like new. Since the radios use similar tubes and fairly generic circuitry, they’re often simple and repetitive enough to be repaired without a schematic or service information. Schematics
First, I needed the schematic for the RCA
radio. My Rider’s library ends at Volume XIX, and even the last volume
published (XXIII) only covered sets made in the late 1950s. A glance in my
Sams Technical Publishing Annual Index1 showed they offered a Photofax for
servicing the RJD-10Y, which I’d have to order direct or through a dealer.
On a hunch, I checked the Beitman’s manuals stored on my computer
hard-drive. Sure enough, I found out that a model covered, RCA’s RGD-24,
used the same RC-1213P chassis as the RJD-10Y. The Beitman’s schematic and
pictorial board layout are shown in Figure 1. |
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