UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post

Craig Sawyers · 23rd Sep 2017, 11:11 am

I totally agree with all of that. But the old 405 line fix reminded me of my very recent wife and I in our early 20's in a flat in Southampton in about 1979. The delightful Scottish landlady said she had an old TV, and we were welcome to it - it didn't work, but perhaps I could fix it.

This old beast (the TV, not the landlady!) was in the usual veneered cocktail cabinet casework. I quickly found the problem - the mains dropper resistor was open circuit. No visible value on it, so I off-wound it, in two sections of course, and measured the resistance. Replaced it with a modern high power wirewound and it woke right up.

Watched the first space shuttle launch on that old TV. All before transmission on 405 line was discontinued.

I then got a TV (transistor) tuner front end, and tweaked it so that it produced an output that I could feed it into a Heathkit FM tuner, and into the hifi system. So we had an ancient 405 line television with hifi sound!

All great fun.

23rd Sep 2017, 11:11 am	#2
Craig Sawyers Dekatron Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Oxford, UK. Posts: 4,992	Re: Appeal Of This Hobby I totally agree with all of that. But the old 405 line fix reminded me of my very recent wife and I in our early 20's in a flat in Southampton in about 1979. The delightful Scottish landlady said she had an old TV, and we were welcome to it - it didn't work, but perhaps I could fix it. This old beast (the TV, not the landlady!) was in the usual veneered cocktail cabinet casework. I quickly found the problem - the mains dropper resistor was open circuit. No visible value on it, so I off-wound it, in two sections of course, and measured the resistance. Replaced it with a modern high power wirewound and it woke right up. Watched the first space shuttle launch on that old TV. All before transmission on 405 line was discontinued. I then got a TV (transistor) tuner front end, and tweaked it so that it produced an output that I could feed it into a Heathkit FM tuner, and into the hifi system. So we had an ancient 405 line television with hifi sound! All great fun.