This content details the challenging restoration of a 1940 Montgomery Wards Airline mini radio, highlighting the complexities arising from multiple model variations and the need for meticulous component identification and repair.
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hi welcome to another edition of antique
radio archaeology today we're going to
do a restoration on a montgomery wards
airline brand mini radio and this thing
was produced in 1940
and it goes by the model number 04 br 511a
511a
now i picked this thing up off of ebay
about 11 years ago and i've spent quite
a bit of time over the years just
intermittently doing a little bit of
research on it
and it was tough
and let me tell you why
because this particular model has
has
a model number that goes right here
on this chassis
that's missing
and so is the sticker on the bottom so
so
what that has done is it's caused me to
have to
figure out what model i had now this
particular radio was produced in
four different years in 1940 they
produced an 04br 511a and a 512a
the 511a is the brown bakelite version
you see here the 512a is an ivory version
version
later in 1941
they continued producing the same radio
but they changed the model number
instead of it being an old 4br it was a
1 4br for 1941
and they also had the 511 a and b for
brown and ivory no circuit changes no
nothing it was just a model number
change and that was the beginning of 1941.
1941.
towards the middle to end of 1941 they
introduced a
new version of it it had a different
dial glass or plastic i should say
on it which was a little more ornate it
had kind of a gold surround on it looked
really pretty
and inside they actually switched over
from the 35 l6 gt output tube
to the 50 l6 gt output tube and when
they did that they also eliminated the
filament resistor because obviously the
50 is going to take a little bit more uh
power so uh
by eliminating it the
power it needed to function obviously we
all know that in 1940
one was pretty much the last year they
were making a lot of consumer grade
radios because of the war
so in 1945 they came back with another
version of this radio and it was the
54 br for 1945
and they changed the last digits to 1501 a
a
and 1502 a for the brown and ivory version
version
now on the 1945 version they did some
minor uh tweaks on the circuitry
um the dial
glass changed to one with larger numbers and
and
they also
reintroduced the filament resistor a
smaller one in the 1940 version
version
it was using a
50 ohm
resistor they eliminated it in the
1941 model year
and then they brought back a resistor
only it was a 33 ohm so obviously the they
they
probably figured out that it was drying
a little bit too much
so uh in
in
1946 they really didn't do anything
different there was no additional model
but 1947 they came up with the last
version of this and that was the 74br 1501
1501 b
b
and 1502 b for brown and ivory and
and
that one had the same dial as the 1945
the only
big difference and that was a big
difference was a lot of the circuitry was
was modified
modified so
so
the hard part about this whole process
was trying to figure out what exactly
did i have you know
there were so many different variations
so i had to pretty much
get the schematics for each year and
compare them and finally determine that
this is either a 1940 or 1941 early model
model
with that being said
i now know what i need to do to restore
this radio so let's go ahead and
open this thing up and
get into a little bit more of how this
thing was so unique at the time it's
really amazing some of the things they
did in order to miniaturize it
let's go ahead and get this chassis out
as you can see this has some full-size
tubes in it's pretty uh
i mean they're i guess they were small
for the time sort of
but uh they're definitely bigger than uh
tubes today and
and
now this thing was in pretty rough shape
when i got it
11 years ago
i did clean it up a little bit
as far as the chassis and
the case here so
so
definitely don't have to do this during
this restoration
but here you have the tube complement
a 12 sa7 right here that goes basically
to the antenna circuit and then you have the
the
12 sq7 which is the detector 12 sk7 over
here which is the if amplifier
and then you have a 35
z5 gt which is the rectifier tube
and over here is your output 2 which is the
the
like i said before the 35 l6 gt and in
other models that would be a 50 l6 gt on
top here we have your
your
electrolytic capacitors which those are
going to have to be replaced obviously
see it's all warped
that's that face plate
as you can see we've got
our work cut out for us
now here's some of the uniqueness of
this radio that i wanted to point out
okay here's the tuning
now as you can see
as i'm tuning it there's some rods i
don't know if you can see the one back
here or not
but there's rods going in and out
these two coils
and that's your antenna tuning section
very very unique i really like that
down here we have a lot of
got some blown uppers
capacitors here you can see the ends
blown out of that one that one
the cord of course the electrical cords
cut off right there so i'm gonna have to replace
replace
six capacitors which are here here here here
here there
so i got one two three four five six
those six so i'm gonna go ahead and
replace those first and then you can go
from there
on the back here you have this uh
connection here that's your antenna connection
connection
and it hits the back of this plate
when that's screwed in and then you
attach your antenna to here so
so
basically your antenna hits that
capacitor right here
before going into the antenna section
it's using this back plate as a capacitor
capacitor
okay so in preparation for
this restoration i went ahead and got a
power cord to replace the one that was
cut off i went ahead and drew out the
capacitors and the values that i need
and i went ahead and identified them
from the schematic
all right
i went ahead and got my electrolytics
already now remember the electrolytic capacitors
capacitors
are built into
into here
here
and what i've got is a
a
40 microfarad and a 20 microfarad built
into that so
so
to replace it what i picked up was i've
got a 22 microfarad and i'm going to go
with a 47 microfarad for the 40.
so that should work i always like going
a little higher if i don't have the the
so that's it that's my six capacitors
okay just to make things a little
simpler what i've done is i've
identified which capacitors i'm
replacing it's going to be c4 c6
c6
c8 and c9 are those electrolytics i've
got a c10 c12 14 and 15.
so those are the capacitors and this
tells me where they're hooked to
okay so
one of the issues that i ran into was c15
c15
which is right here
is hooked between
pin three and pin four on this tube socket
socket
which is the output two it is not
in the schematic hooked between three
and four i checked the other schematics
for the other models it's not hooked
between three and four on any of those
so i really started questioning what the
validity is the schematic and then i
went and found a couple of these online
that showed the bottom here
and what i was able to determine is this
capacitor's hook between pin three
and this first lug on r6
so i followed this
boom boom boom come down
over to here up to here and there it is
it's hooked to that lug on r6
on the schematic
so this is a this is definitely wrong i
don't know if somebody
tried to fix something and replaced it i
don't know
but whatever it is i'm going to have to
correct that
but other than that all the rest of
these are hooked up correctly i did
check that
and i'm going to go ahead and replace those
so what i did was i went ahead and drew
some leads here to show where these
capacitors were hooked i'm going to the
rheostat here
with these two capacitors i'm going to
that switch
on this real stat which is from this capacitor
capacitor
i've got these two pins here that these
are hooked to
same here every one of these capacitors
i know where they're hooked
based on this little drawing so
i can go ahead and use that to do my recap
recap
which will make things a lot easier so
now i can go ahead and cut these out and
okay well that one looks rough shape
all right
so i just got one left that's that one
okay so
i'm working on trying to get this
electrolytic out and what i found out
was i got a
wire here that's in pretty bad shape
so as i've discovered that wire that's
busting apart here
goes all the way into this can right here
here
so i've got some issues i'm going to
have to get to that can
i'm going to have to replace the wires
in that can so
this is getting a little more
complicated as we go along so
all right so i've had to cut all these
wires i went ahead and marked where
these colors go on my diagram
for these
transformers so what i've got to do is
i went ahead and unscrew this i already
got the other one out
just need to pull that through there
there
got them out
now as you can see these things got
there we go so i got to replace those wires
wires wow
wow
all right so i'm going to go ahead and uh
uh
replace some wires here i'm just going
to use i have some
i don't have any of the colors i need
but oh well
i i marked on the
on my sheet there what which one's what so
so
so i am in the process of reinstalling
this can
i got the wires fished up through here it's
it's
route these wires where i need to
and then we'll get this other can
installed on the other side and get
all right so i've been able to secure
back over to here
and here
i've got the what used to be the brown wire
wire
route it over to here where it needs to
be and it's all wrapped on there i
haven't soldered them yet i'm going to
okay
i'll leave that wire up for now
this one's a lot easier than the other
it's a nifty little tool here you just
mash it over the
nut and
it grabs it
okay so i've got
all these cables from that ifcan
routed and put in place i've got one
here one here here
one that goes back to there
and one that goes right there so i need
to solder those i also since i've got
this uh mica
mica
capacitor back in place i need a side of
those wires that i took off earlier
so i'm just going to get all those
the next little step here
uh i need to hook up this wire i need to
hook up this wire these all went to
that capacitor
that electrolytic capacitor which was
actually two capacitors
so what i've got is there's this little
and i had one
two little lugs here and i had this lug
here this is the negative side of those
two capacitors
this is the positive side of the 40
microfarad this is the positive side of
the 20 microfarad capacitor
so what i'm going to do
is i picked up one of these
i'm going to install that
down here
over that
little nut
and screw for that if can now this is
not hooked to anything it's just a lug
but these three here that leaves those
three lugs standing
that's going to allow me to put these
two filter capacitors the 47
and the 20
right there
tie those to the negative
and those to the positives and then i
can hook these wires to this
instead of down here
and pretty much create the same
uh electrical connection so i'm going to
go ahead and
pre-solder this i'm gonna put the
capacitors on here and
the resistor between them by the way i
did go in and check all the resistors
and made sure that every one of them was
reading within specs and they are
so let me go ahead and do that real quick
okay so here is my
two electrolytic capacitors the filter
capacitors and that resistor r3
all tied together on this
all right so that's going to get mounted
with that screw and that
be placed right in there and then i can
so i'm totally recap now
i've got all six capacitors
one two three
four under here
five and six
i've got the two electrolytics
i went ahead and uh kind of went through
it made sure that all the wiring wasn't
touching anything and none of the other
components are touching i measured all
the resistors
made sure they were all in good shape so
i should be in good
shape now to go ahead and install the
power cord
okay so
just got the power cord installed
got it hooked over here to the switch
and pin two on the rectifier tube
so now we should
kind of checked everything made sure
nothing's touching anything else and
and
let's go ahead and get a dim bulb tester
and fire it up okay so here comes the
moment of truth
always the scary moment
got my dim bulb tester hooked up let's
go ahead and
i don't see any
any light on the
what's interesting is i don't have an
here's the up
when it comes to the
issue he's thinking about this
well i got two two stations without an
antenna i can't complain about that
well now we know it works
so there's a couple things i need to do
here uh the speaker itself has a couple
little tears in it it's just
very slight but
i i can cover that with some glue and
help to hold that together
okay so what i'd like to do is a real
quick uh speaker repair
you may not be able to see in the camera
but there's a hairline crack that runs here
here
that way that way and then there's a
little spot over here that's
that's busted through and
and
looks like
right there too is a little bit
so what i'm going to do is i'm going to
mix a little bit of white glue with
water it's about a one to one ratio
so let me just squeeze out a little bit here
push that on there
and what i'm going to try and do is get
the back side which i don't think you're
going to be able to see too well from here
let that dry and
so while we're waiting on the glue to
dry i went ahead and printed up some
okay now the reason why i know the
dimensions of this thing is because the uh
you can kind of see where the label was so
it's gonna go right there [Music]
well i hope you enjoyed today's episode
it was definitely an adventure for me
because uh i've been wanting to restore
this thing for
gosh 11 years now so finally got around
to it glad i did and it was definitely a
learning experience i can't believe how
compact everything was in this thing and
how hard it was to get in there and do
the work that needed to be done
but it's all done i do want to do an
alignment on it at some point but uh for
now it's uh
it's good to go i
will probably just be putting it on my
shelf and listening to it when i can
in the meantime i hope you enjoyed
today's episode
if you did please hit the like button if
you'd like to see more episodes like this
this
please hit subscribe if you haven't
already done so in the meantime happy
restorations everybody hope you have a
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