[paulsherwin]

Similar radios were very common. The ones with slider controls do tend to have lost a lot of paint, as in this example. The electronics are very conventional with transformer coupled AF amps. Although they had and still have a poor reputation, they often perform quite well. I used one as a bathroom radio for a while.

They don't usually suffer from electronic faults such as bad transistors, so the first thing to do in this case is to clean the wavechange switches again, and then look carefully for wiring problems to the aerial. A meter probe will act as a temporary aerial. Don't start twiddling with coils and transformers until you understand what the fault is and after checking everything else first.

Did it work normally when it was banished to the loft?

Don't expect anything useful on the air band range. It is still using the FM discriminator, and aviation comms use AM. You can sometimes resolve strong signals with careful tuning but it's really just a marketing gimmick.