Ever Ready Sky Leader restoration

[howard]

Hello,

Ive at last finished restoring my blue 1957 Ever Ready Sky Leader which has taken on and off several weeks but Im pleased to report that its turned out rather well and entirely original (no boot polish or paint !).

I bought this off an eBay radio dealer whose feedback rating is around 90% so he'd obviously upset a few people ...... nobody wanted to buy this scruffy looking SkyMaster so after the end of the auction I sent him an Email and offered him £8 for this 'perfect little radio' as he described it cos it had a good carrying strap and I won it via a quick 'buy it now' auction

When it arrived it was awful, the rear grille which wasnt pictured on eBay was shoved right in and the speaker cloth was squiffy and peeling off, all the brass trim was badly tarnished and it was filthy.

However it was simple to repair the speaker cloth cos its just stapled along with a piece of thick card onto the rear door. I took all the brass fittings off including the screws and polished them withy brasso and then gave the case and the knobs (I didnt attempt to remove those) a good clean in upholstery cleaner. Inside was nice and clean, but it wasnt working .... I cleaned the waveband switches and it sprang back to life

I love this late 50s radio, its a unique and very pleasing desgn with its brass fittings and chrome knobs and has that wonderful long strap for going over ones shoulder. This one is complete, it even has the original owners name and address on a label inside. As you can see, its almost perfect, theres just one tiny dink on the right front edge.

I left the seller a positive feedback cos it really did turn out a 'perfect little radio' after all

Howard

[Nickthedentist]

Looks good, Howard, I don't know how you do it.

This looks rather similar to the "Sky Master". I had one of these as a child (10p from my primary school jumble sale) but ended up dismantling it for parts
Nick.

[Andrew c]

Hello Howard another nice restoration under your belt. very nice radio indeed

[paulsherwin]

I have one of these, I'm not sure it it's a 'Master' or 'Leader' as the badge has broken off. Mine works quite well (somebody has fitted a mains PSU) but it's in very ropey condition, especially the knobs. If I'm ever in need of an OC44 I suspect it'll bite the dust.

Anybody got any spare Sky Leader / Master knobs?

Best regards, Paul

[Tim]

Hi all
I have the Berec version of this(Demon) which I obtained recently via our local Freecycle.
This one works too, but needed a thorough spraying with switch cleaner and the wires to the LW coil on the ferrite resoldering. LW currently only works when the LW button is held down, but does perform well on both bands.
Mine doesn't have the shoulder strap, apparently a common defect, and once the dirt was cleaned off turned out to be finished in dark red.

ISTR an earlier thread.......................

[Paul_RK]

Hi all.

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

I have one of these, I'm not sure it it's a 'Master' or 'Leader' as the badge has broken off.

Paul,

The Sky Leader has a plastic escutcheon around the wavechange buttons and takes a PP9 battery: the later Sky Master has a brass escutcheon, is smaller and uses a PP7. OC44s are enough I think to confirm that yours is a Leader, as the Master suffers from AF117s.

Howard,

Very nice restoration! Strange how some radios are much harder to find in certain colours than others, and with the Sky Leader the dark blue version seems quite a bit less common than the tan one. With the Master both blue and tan are fairly often met with, but there's also a red one that rarely turns up. They all seem very reliable sets, even the Master in my experience despite those AF117s. The Sky Leader was in production for several years, and changed quite a bit internally in that time, though only in very minor ways as regards the cabinet. Early ones use a hand-wired aluminium chassis, later versions a printed circuit board, and a redesigned circuit that offers more output power at the price of higher battery consumption. Something Ever Ready probably didn't mind

Paul

[howard]

Thanks all,

The smaller Sky Master is I think an even nicer radio but very rare indeed, (Im looking out for one) and hardly any of those appear on eBay, whereas these Sky Leaders are quite common usually in red but rarely have their shoulder straps and sell for around a fiver or not at all. There is a tan one permanently for sale at an inflated price in an eBay shop which looks to be in the same sort of condition as this one but it has lost its front badge. But as we speak theres a blue one on eBay complete with strap but it has a small rip on the back and the plastic buttons have cracked, a common problem I think along with the escutcheon which likewise cracks but its still a good one

My Sky Leader works really well, its robustly built and I think a radio well worth looking out for, from a British manufacturer who sadly I believe was the first to go under in the 1960s.

Howard

[Paul_RK]

Maybe the Sky Master is just so nice a set that people tend to keep them ... I'd certainly not call it a rare one. The Sky Leader production run was very long, though, and amounted to I think upwards of 150,000 sets. I can't get at my blue Sky Master just now, but the tan one here is numbered just below 27,000. It helps that the Sky Master's escutcheon's more durable, and the handle, though it can be detached, seems a lot less likely to be lost.

I don't know where they'd been since their production, but one of the surplus firms advertising in Practical Wireless in about 1969-70 was selling Sky Masters for around £6 each, supplied with service manual but unbadged and (at least in the instance of the red one I had for a while) without handles...

Paul