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Hi I picked up this old philco. It looks worthy of restoration but the power cord does not look anything like a conventional set up. Can anyone tell me what has happened to this thing and what to do about getting a convention power supply wired in.
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It needs a battery set. I discovered. Can these be converted?
So my research indicates that you can make a battery pack for these. The wires that lead to the plug-in indicate A, B or C.. There is 1 wire labelled A on the tag it says aircell A+, 3 sets of wires labelled b with 45V on the plug end, 2 sets of wires labelled C with – 4 1/2 -3 V. If for instance I wired 5 9 V batteries in series to get 45 V could I just cut of the plug end and theoretically wire each B labelled wire set to a battery pack?
Does anyone know the proper voltage for the A wire as there is no end on that one which indicates? Lastly what is with the range indicated on the C wires? Any help would be appreciated. I have seen plans to build one of these and I have even see a kit to build a plug in power supply for an antique radio set on Amazon.com. Might be a good way to go rather than continually buying batteries.
odnt’ quote me without checking the schematic but yes it looks like a battery set, yes you could use some 9 volt cells at least temporarily. it might be 67 1/2 volt?
but check!you could find that a printer powers supply could work. for example, I’m just getting rid of a Kodak one, they dont; make ink cartridges , its about 35 volts and Im unsure of the amperage, but maybe something similar could work? two of them together maybe?
you can probably download the graphics to make your own battery pack cover to make it look original , you could use rechargeable cells too. i guess it depends how often you see yourself or someone else using it. But it looks like you are on the right track. I’m sure Ive seen graphics for those battery packs around.
the connectors liike like 9V ones , but giant and if you do some searching Im sure there are some plans for building power supplies.The old air cell batteries were about 2 volts. Your tubes are all 2 volt tubes so 2 volts for the A battery would be right. The C voltage can be experimented with, it will be low, I would guess 4 volts or lower. This is usually not critical and varying the voltage while checking performance will find the right voltage.
A LM 317 based power supply could be made, one was listed on this forum as a farm Radio Power Supply.
Ed.
Thanks this is starting to make sense. One other question. There is also an alligator clip is this some sort of ground.
if it’s an alligator clip it is probably non original ,
you might find some batteries that used these Fahnestock clipshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fahnestock_clip.png
the clips could have been on the original battery cells ( and could have been removed from the original batteries)
also some radios may have these clips on the chassis or on the back cover , used to hook up the antenna and/ or the ground wire to the radio.
You’ll have to trace where the wire goes to figure that out. I suppose they could have been on a terminal strip to connect your batteries to as well.
Im glad Ed is helping, he has much more knowledge of radio electrical than myself.i think the alligator clip came later, but could be wrong. usually if you see those its something someone added, “I think”
Phil
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