That big nine volt and connector were truly a collectors item.

You know I have been following all the old repair sites now for some time, and I enjoy them very much, so thanks for the entertainment. I have collected a few old transistor radios now, went in and cleaned them up, did some re-cap on those that were actually showing signs of damage and such and I was having a blast doing it. I even began building Wifi Radio sets, I have several of them now, and blew about that many up by screwing around with them after I had them up and working good.  So the other day my old partner from the PD called, now we go way back to the very early 1980's and have been very close ever since. At any rate, he asked me what I was up to, and I explained my love for old electronics, and he hit me with the logical question:  Who even listens to radio any more?  Well I had to think about that, you know what with the MP3 players and wifi music and such, but then it dawned on me, I always have the radio on when I am driving, and I used to drive a lot, don't much any more since I lost my wife to cancer, but as I type, I have ear buds in and have them plugged into a little box that I built a wifi stereo radio into last summer.  She works great I have it tuned to Flower Power Radio, and when the sirens blare in town announcing a fire, I quickly turn to our home town radio station to learn the location of the fire, it is always broadcast.  Beside my chair a scanner runs, she is an old one that I had back when I was on the PD and about all she receives any more are the local ambulance dispatch calls, but there again, she is a radio.  Beside that sits my cheap china Bofeng 2 meter hand held, set to our local repeater frequency in case someone needs help, or just wants to chew the rag for a few minutes so I guess there are some of us old timers who still listen to radio, even if it is a bit modernized compared to the hey day of radio.  73's KE0JBL.

It's Nice To Have Old Parts Lying Around
Like That. That's What I Did
Was Use Parts Out Of Old Radios
& TV's & They Sure Came In Handy.

Thanks for making this video I like old radios.  Your Heathkit radio was sold as a kit so it all comes apart and is easier to work on than many other radios. Your capacitance measurements are varying because they are still in the circuit.  To measure them well you have to take them out, but you are wise for suspecting old capacitors to dry out.  They do, more so with AC powered radios.  Power supply capacitors are notorious for giving up the ghost.  Not so much with battery powered stuff.  The bad capacitor you found was the one whose value was slowly changing.  Well done!  I still use my grandmother's 1971 Panasonic R-1551 AM radio.  Works great.  4. AA batteries last for years.  Never had to fix it.

This is the kit that got me started in electronics! I received the radio as a Christmas present around 1969, when I was 10. By that time, Heathkit had replaced the huge 9V battery with 6 C cells. I eventually cannibalized the radio for parts, but I found a nice replacement on eBay a few years ago. I have the assembly manual with alignment and troubleshooting instructions, which I would be happy to scan and email upon request.

Learning from the mistakes made..well done!

BRILLIANT TROUBLESHOOTING-!!

Came upon this little video late, for some reason YouTube pushed it my way this early morning.  Ever get one of those mornings where you simply cannot sleep? Well this morning I awoke at 3:30 and tried to no avail to return to the restless sleep I had been experiancing, Didn't work, so I got up and came out to the living room, only to find my daughter sleeping on the couch. Anyhow she has moved back to bed, I am still sitting here  wondering what the hell I am doing up at such a stupid hour of the morning. When I open my laptop and open YouTube, there was this video in the # 1 slot!  Glad they did, it is a cool video, and I learned a bit.  I always used to tell my students at the police academy years ago when I was a younger man, to strive to learn one new thing every day.  If you learn something new, and can maintain it, it will be one of the few things that can never be taken away from you.  Cool radio as well, I love the older transistors, they take me back to the days of my youth, when I was courting the love of my life, sadly I lost her last August to Cancer after 51 years and 4 days of wedded bliss.  Perhaps that is what keeps waking me so damn early.  Not good for we old farts to loose sleep, seems my hair is falling out faster with each early morning as well.

Thanks for your time, ingenuity and patients...

Good video, thanks.

A 60 year old battery from the 1960's looks like new and shows no signs of leakage. Now a Duracell starts to leak after 6 months.

I built one of these when I was a kid

Thank you for the video

Interestinging interpretation of the ESR readings. Fixed frequency oscillator plus different capacitor values tested equals different ESR readings. I'll try that with mine. Cool old radio too. Heathkit generally had excellent mechanical design, and as you say, the person who soldered it did a fantastic job.

I am learning, Thank you !

Transformer coupling (inter-stage and output) was VERY common with germanium transistor radios.  When silicon transistors took over, then totempole transformerless output stages became common.  I have a GR-17 AM-FM kit I built as a teenager.  Still works, but I had to rebuild the battery holder.   Testing caps in circuit can give false negative results.  Most of those caps were probably either audio coupling or bypass, and since that part of the circuit seemed to work  the caps would have been the last thing I'd have tried.  Besides electrolytic caps normally had a tolerance of 20% or more!  IIRC that sk3010 might have been a Ge VHF transistor for FM radios.  It had a larger case than usual and 4 leads.

That use of transformers in the driver and output stages was a left-over from valve sets. The thinking was an evolutionary process and at first they put the circuits together with transistors in place of valves. I was around when transistor sets came out and they were all like that.
I think you got away lightly with this set, I've seen lots where every transistor was junk. Often those metal can types had tin whisker syndrome and although that can be overcome, bad junctions are permanent.
Very nice set and lovely to see it and hear it with that generous speaker.

The circuit line up with 6 transistors was very common in it's day. With three RF transistors and three audio. The first audio would drive the  phase splitting driver transformer followed by the remaining two in push pull driving the output transformer. With 9 volts you could get around 500mW -1 watt output on a good day. Heathkit always used good parts, I built a number of pieces of test gear, all worked very well. A great way to learn, sadly, no more. Banggood and the like with no or very poor documentation is no substitute.

Built to last.

Nice Old Radio