Quote:
Originally Posted by majoconz
I have the "Convair 1" which is probably the same thing in different clothing
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Me too! They're all much of a muchness, just with different case designs.
I'm old enough to have bought one of these brand new with my saved up pocket money as a youngster. I think it was from Exchange & Mart / Headquarters & General or some such. It was my second bought from new transistor radio, the first being a Sobell which I sold to buy the Russian set. The Sobell was bought because it had shortwave and strangely, after a lifetime, I've recently been given the exact model of that radio. I bought the Convair for the six shortwaves and also because I thought that due to its larger size that it would have a 'good' tone compared to a smaller radio - it didn't!
I still have the Convair to this day and at this moment in time it just stands as an ornament / display item along with several other smallish radios on top of the piano. I took the batteries out a few years ago to prevent damage, but I still have them on a shelf in the workshop as they were still good when removed and I could keep an eye on them if they started leaking, and they haven't. I just went and had a look at one and its use by date is 02/2008, I measured it with a DVM and it was still indicating 1.51 volts, admittedly off load, so I'll feed this set of batteries to the radio a bit later and see if it's still working.
The faults with this radio (and I'd imagine they're what you'd regard as stock faults) are the turret tuner contacts need the occasional clean, especially if the set stands unused for long periods. The ground end of the volume control goes o/c intermittently, giving full volume at minimum setting. The on/off switch itself intermittently doesn't work, meaning that the set sometimes doesn't switch on and then when it's on, doesn't switch off without a bit of a fiddle and putting ones ear to the speaker to check whether it has actually switched off completely - the 'click' of the switch is still perfect, it's just the operation of the contacts themselves that are unreliable.
I remember the original batteries with their cardboard cases and Russian writing that came with the radio, now long gone. I was disappointed with the sound quality of this radio for its size. My parents used to take in policemen as lodgers when I was a kid and I remember one of them had a Perdio Town & Country, which had what I considered to have great audio tone for a portable radio, so I was very disappointed that the Convair was nowhere near as good as that particular radio. The circuit diagram is in the original handbook, which I still have somewhere. I did have the original box, but my younger brother pinched it decades ago and used it for something - it's just possible that he still has it. I'll try the set of batteries/cells in it later and give it a bit of a run.