After feeling a bit jaded with slow progress on other projects, I finally gave in and dragged the big Grundig 3028 languishing as a ornament in a spare room out to the shed to be reactivated! This set was given to me about 12 years ago from a elderly neighbour. I always remember he served on HMS Suffolk - during the attack and sinking of the Bismarck, the memory of which will always be associated with this radio. Back on topic! This set was untested and after getting the back off I noticed the internal fuse was bridged with a bit of fuse wire and was pushed in the 100V clips!
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I changed this for a 2A slow blow clipped into the 220V clips and carried on basic checks such as main lead polarity check, plug fuse, continuity and so on.
I was expecting the worse to be honest, the mains bridge rectifier cremated and the main TX toasted but both looked OK and checked out OK on the DMM. With the chassis out, a external speaker was connected and power was applied via a 42w lamp limiter which glowed brightly for 30 seconds and then dimmed down. The mains electrolytics were warm but not excessively. A 150w bulb was swapped and the set was tried out on all wavebands for the first time. SW came in with good sensitivity, MW very good but LW was dead for now. A lot of noise and instability from scratchy switches and controls were expected. Switching to FM resulted in silence. A wiggle of the ECC85 brought Radio 2 and the Eurovision song contest blasting out. The sound quality is excellent and the tone control responds. Even the EM34 gives a bit of a green glow for good measure. This is a very promising radio and now to work through the circuit end to end weeding out dodgy blue and cardboard cylindrical caps. There is a bit of damage, some of the scale in the top corners appear to have clear tape which has pulled the black print off. There is also a rust stain in the middle of the superb grille cloth suggesting a period stored in damp conditions.