Project RA/DA

Progress Blog

This page was last updated: August 11, 2009

Tuesday Aug. 11.

I spent some time working on the worst of the DAs Monday afternoon,

even though it was 97 degrees today, no AC in the garage... I put a fan in the window to try and pull some of the hot dead air out of the shop, it helped a little, I guess.

This DA is the one shown in the photos that's missing the 2 phone jacks and had the wrong filament rheostat, who ever felt the need to replace the rheo sure did a hack job of it. In place of the Radiola rheo they installed a General Radio one, it's way to big for the space so they had to hack some of the internal parts to make room. They also hacked up the wiring and for some reason remounted the

remaining stock rheo upside down. Along with everything else they drilled a hole in the front panel for a mounting screw and cut away some of the sheet metal shielding that's behind to front panel.. WHAT A MESS ! ! !

I went ahead and installed the new rheo and repositioned the other one even though I'll have to take them out again to replace the shielding.

The 2 phone jack I found in my parts box worked perfectly. Both of these were that same so I had to take one apart and remove the internal N/C switch parts

since the phone jack for the final stage does not have the switch. When I took the leaves for the switch out the rest of it was too short, lucky I had a Switchcraft lever switch rebuilding kit I had saved (you know what my favorite

saying is? "It's better to have it and not need it, than the need it and not have it")

So one of the leaf spacers from the Switchcraft kit fit worked perfectly to fill

the space of the removed switch levees.

I discovered that I'll need to replace the pointer on one of the rheos, the one that was already there has the older style pointer and the replacement that Robert Lozier gave me has the new style pointer. It's seems funny to say old style and new style since they may be only a few months apart. I sent an email to Gary Schneider with Play Things of the Past asking him if he has any of the parts I need. Maybe I can get Robert to look for some at Rochester too.

More later, it's 2am I tired. 73

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This is posted on Saturday Aug. 8th. Today I rode to the CC-AWA Summer Swap meet in Valdese NC with my friend Robert Lozier.

To help with the RA/DA project Robert was good enough to have brought me a perfect replacement for the incorrect rheostat in one of the sets.

I was lucky enough to find in one of my parts bins a pair of correct headphone jacks.

(thanks goodness I spent the last 2 1/2 months sorting out some of the thousands of parts I've collected over the last 40 years of collecting).

I discovered this afternoon the I'm missing one of the round bar stock

spacers that mount between the front and rear panels, I also need to

oval head screw for the front panel and the flat head screw for the

back panel.

I also need one of the small L brackets that are mounted on the

side of the cabinet and hold the chassis in place.

That's all for now, 73, Ron w4ron

I thought a progress blog might be the easiest way to post updates to the RA/DA project instead of having to make changes to the main web page. You'll be able to tell how current this blog is by the last updated: date at the top of the page.