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John T. Frye's monthly "Mac's
Radio Service Shop" techno-drama, written in story form - was usually an incognito
lesson on circuit functionality or troubleshooting, how to deal with customers,
industry regulations and news, or an introduction to new components and equipment.
As the "Unusual New Equipment" title suggests, this time Mac described a few new
items added to the service shop to aid in their work. Often when reading one of
the episodes, I do a Google search on specific components or equipment mentioned
in the article. He describes a special-purpose CRT (Sylvania's new
5AXP4 Television Receiver Check Tube)
that could be used universally for troubleshooting in place of a wide variety of
installed picture tubes. I've seem them on
eBay for $30-$50. There is not much you cannot find on eBay if you watch long
enough. He also bought a pair of 7x35 binoculars for inspecting TV antennas from
the ground, and points out how a magnification greater than around 7x results in
difficulty in holding them steady enough to be useful. My
Celestron 15x70 SkyMaster binocs require a tripod or being steadied against
a tree or house to keep the image steady. Stars are a constant streak when holding
normally - especially after a day of drinking coffee.
Unusual New Equipment
 By John T. Frye
Barney was a little late to work, and he was hurrying, so he almost knocked down
the customer emerging from the service shop carrying a tape recorder in his hand.
However, with the quick reflexes of youth, he not only managed to avert the near
collision but transformed it into a flourishing gesture of holding open the door.
As he hurried into the service department of the radio and TV repair shop he found
Mac, his boss, busily engaged in applying a coating of high-voltage shellac, or
"corona gunk" as it was familiarly known, to the secondary coil of a horizontal
deflection transformer that had developed a "blowout" at a point where a primary
lead had sagged against the winding.
"There," Mac said as he put the combination cork-and-application-brush back into
the bottle, "when it dries, that ought to hold the arc. That's the third coating
I've put on, and each layer is supposed to provide about 10,000 volts worth of insulation.
Unless the winding itself has been damaged, we've probably saved the owner the cost
of a new transformer. Don't turn this set on, though, until that dope has thoroughly
dried. It'll catch fire when it's wet."
Barney was not paying too much attention. Instead he was eyeing three intriguing-looking
boxes the parcel post man had left lying on the bench. "What's in these?" he demanded.
"Three pieces of rather out-of-the-ordinary service equipment," Mac said as he
began opening the smallest package. "You know I've always maintained a service technician
ought to snoop around a bit in other fields now and then to see if he can't find
equipment there that will make his own job easier. What you see here is the result
of taking some of my own advice. First, there is this little transistor receiver
that measures only five inches by three inches by an inch and a quarter. It's the
very first practical transistor radio to hit the market, and it's a true superhet,
with two i.f. stages, a.v.c. ferrite core antenna, and earphone jack for a hearing-aid
type earphone accessory. I think it can be very useful to us in service work."
"How?"
"I'll show you just as soon as I insert this 22½-volt hearing aid battery
that powers it," Mac said as he snapped the back of the case on the little set and
turned it on. Instantly the shop was filled with a surprising amount of volume.
"Watch now," Mac said as he turned the receiver slowly about with his hand. At two
points, one hundred and eighty degrees apart, the volume of the reception fell off
sharply.
"When I was playing with one of these at the store, I noticed the null positions
of the receiving loop were very sharp and positive. That gave me the idea we can
take the little set up on roofs with us and use this directional characteristic
to aim TV antennas. Every city with a TV transmitter around here also has one or
more radio stations that can be easily picked up on this sensitive little job. As
far away as we are, the radio tower and the TV antenna in each of these towns can
be considered as being in the same direction from us for all practical purposes.
S-o-o-o, all we have to do is find out where the little receiver says the radio
station is and then point the TV at that point of 'the compass, and we'll have it
right on the nose. What's more, this little set will be a jim-dandy to tuck in your
shirt pocket when you are going out on a noisy reception complaint. You can tell
at once if the noise is in the set or not. And I anticipate that in many cases this
tiny little portable will lead us right to the source of the noise."
"You know what I think?" Barney asked as he watched Mac fondling the plastic
case of the little set.
"No, and I'm not sure I want to find out," Mac replied cautiously.
"I think you're just trying to hatch up some good reasons so you can buy that
little set and charge it up to the shop."
"Could be!" Mac said with a guilty grin. "I never could resist as neatly an engineered
piece of electronic gear as this is; and when you consider it is the first practical
transistor receiver well, you know I still have the first crystal receiver I built
and my old Radiola !"
"Okay," Barney said with an understanding smile. "I don't blame you a bit. What's
in those other packages?"
"Here's a pair of prism binoculars," Mac said as he removed them from their leather
case. "They are made in the American zone of Germany; and while they are quite reasonable
in price, they have a lot of good features. They are seven power and have 35 mm.
objectives. All air-to-glass optical surfaces are coated with magnesium fluoride
for better light transmission and to cut down reflections. Central focusing is used
with provision for separate adjustment of the right-hand barrel. They have a hinged
bridge and weigh only 16½ ounces and the field of view is 405 feet at 1000
yards."
As he chanted off these features, Mac walked to the front of the store and gazed
through the binoculars at the rooftops across the street.
"Hey, let me look," Barney said as he tugged at Mac's elbow.
Obediently Mac surrendered the glasses, and Barney peered through them.
"Holy cow!" he exclaimed as he lowered the binoculars and then glanced through
them again. "These things are powerful. Those TV antennas look like they're standing
right outside the window. I can see every bolt, wing-nut, and rivet in them. These
things surely show up my coffee nerves, though. It's hard to hold them still."
"That's why I didn't buy higher powered ones," Mac explained. "Seven power glasses
are about as strong as can be satisfactorily hand held. At that, they make anything
seem seven times closer than it really is. Few towers around here exceed seventy
feet; so that means we can bring the antenna down to ten feet with the glasses.
My thought is that these glasses will save a lot of leg work in climbing around
on roofs and towers to inspect antennas and lead-ins. By watching the antenna while
it is turned with the motor, we can spot troubles such as broken lead-lines, irregular
motor action, loose elements or stacking bars, broken insulators and other such
defects without ever stepping off the ground."
"Speaking of stacking," Barney offered with a faraway look in his eyes, "How's
about my borrowing those binoculars to take with me to Ideal Beach some Sunday?
Some of the babes you see over there are really stacked, and -"
"Never mind!" Mac hastily interrupted. "You can get into enough trouble with
just your bulging baby blue eyes."
"There's still that biggest package," Barney reminded.
Mac opened the end of the cardboard carton that folded out to form a carrying
handle and lifted out a small round picture tube.
"Is that a scope tube?" Barney wanted to know. "It's shaped more like a picture
tube, but surely we haven't got any sets in the store with that small a screen."
"This tube," Mac said with a quizzical grin, "is designed to replace magnetically-deflected
picture tubes up to twenty-four inches or so."
"Oh yeah; then it must be made of rubber," was Barney's dubious comment.
 "No, it's Sylvania's new 5AXP4 Television
Receiver Check Tube that was described in the February, 1955, 'Sylvania News.' It
is intended to replace almost any picture tube you are likely to find in a modern
black-and-white TV receiver-but only for testing purposes, of course. It will take
anode voltages up to 18,000 volts, requires no ion trap, and is self-focusing. You
know I've long wished we could use the fast, reliable, conclusive tube-substitution
method of checking' the picture tube that is so useful in checking the other tubes
in a TV set. Now, thanks to this little job, we can."
"How do you use the tube?"
"Just slip the receiver's yoke over the neck of the tube, put the picture tube
socket on its base, and connect up the high-voltage lead. The manufacturer suggests
using one of those centering-magnet assemblies with the magnets removed to hold
the tube in position in the yoke. This assembly clamps the neck of the tube between
flat springs so that it will stay in position."
"That will be pretty handy," Barney said with mounting enthusiasm. "It means
we can leave the picture tube right in the cabinet in most cases when we are sure
there is nothing wrong with the tube itself and bring only the chassis and deflection
yoke to the store. That will be a real help. I never did relish the idea: of lugging
those big tubes around. There's too much danger of breaking them. On top of that,
they're heavy and hard to get out."
"Don't overlook the sales appeal of this little service tool," Mac said as he
used his pocket steel tape to prove the tube face was only five inches in diameter
and the over-all length was but ten and a half inches. "When we can show our customer
that his set can put out a bright sharp picture on this tube while the picture he
gets on his own is weak and faded, if he gets any picture at all, his sales resistance
will evaporate. This little persuader will present a much more graphic and convincing
argument in favor of ordering a new tube than will a mere meter reading on a tube
tester.
"I think this test tube will be especially appreciated by small shops such as
we are," Mac went on. "We can't carry a large inventory of picture tubes; so usually
we do not have a good tube to try in one of those hard-to-be-sure cases where you
feel reasonably confident the picture tube is at fault but you want to be dead-certain
before telling the customer a new tube will cure his trouble. This 5AXP4 will take
care of those cases for us."
"Changing the subject for a moment," Barney said, "didn't I see Jim taking his
recorder out with him? What was wrong? That about had you stumped yesterday."
Mac smiled broadly as he replied:
"Yes, that was Jim, and the mystery is solved. What puzzled me, you'll remember,
is how the recorder could possibly do what he reported it was doing: namely, suddenly
go berserk during, playback and erase recorded material while it was playing it
and leave only a wavering audio note in its place. He said a recording might sound
fine the first two or three times he played it, but the next time he wanted to listen,
only this note could be heard -and that was all I could hear when I put one of his
tapes on our recorder, too.
"Jim's hobby is recording circus bands - he used to be with a circus, you know
- and several of his prized and irreplaceable recordings were ruined by this strange
fault of his recorder. What made the thing worse was that I could not make it happen
here in the shop. I made a test recording and played it over and over without anything
unusual occurring. Finally, while lying in bed last night, I got an idea of what
might be happening; and the first thing this morning I tried it out. Sure enough,
I could make the same thing happen to the test recording that had been happening
to Jim's calliope music."
"What was wrong?" Barney demanded impatiently.
"You'll remember his recorder has two control knobs. One has Play-Off-Record
positions; the other reads Wind-Off-Rewind. A red button must be pushed down before
the first knob can be turned to Record, and it is held depressed as long as this
knob stays in the record position but snaps back up when the knob is turned to Off.
Neither knob can be turned from the Off position unless the other knob is already
in that position. However, the red button can be held down manually while the Rewind-Wind
knob is worked.
"That's what I did. I simply held this red button down while I was rewinding
the tape. This activated the record and erase heads and wiped the recording from
the tape. At the same time the signal from the bias oscillator was put on the tape.
Remember that the tape was travelling at about ten times its ordinary speed. As
you know, slowing down the speed of the tape below the speed at which it was moving
when a recording was being made has the effect of lowering the pitch of the recorded
material. In this case, when the tape was played at normal speed, the supersonic
erase signal that was recorded during fast rewind was brought down into the audible
range and provided that mysterious wavering note we heard."
"What was Jim doing wrong?" "Since he only used the recorder once or twice a
year, he forgot how to operate it from one time to the next. He remembered, though,
that the red button had to be depressed under some circumstances; so he just depressed
it every time he moved any of the knobs. During rewind he held the button down so
that he would not hear the normal monkey-chatter you get when the tape is moving
fast and the speaker is not cut out or the volume turned down. Sometimes he pushed
it far enough to engage the recording switch; other times he did not. I simply had
him show me how he operated the recorder before I told him what I had found out;
and sure enough, that is what he was doing. I've got him all squared away now, arid
he says he will see I get a couple of passes the next time the circus hits town.
If a certain obstreperous
redhead that I know doesn't consider such entertainment beneath his dignity, I'd
be glad to include him in this
bucolic whingding
upon request."
"It's a date!" Barney exclaimed. "I'll buy the peanuts."
Posted May 9, 2024
(updated from original post
on 2/15/2017)
Mac's Radio Service Shop Episodes on RF Cafe
This series of instructive
technodrama™
stories was the brainchild of none other than John T. Frye, creator of the
Carl and Jerry series that ran in
Popular Electronics for many years. "Mac's Radio Service Shop" began life
in April 1948 in Radio News
magazine (which later became Radio & Television News, then
Electronics
World), and changed its name to simply "Mac's Service Shop" until the final
episode was published in a 1977
Popular Electronics magazine. "Mac" is electronics repair shop owner Mac
McGregor, and Barney Jameson his his eager, if not somewhat naive, technician assistant.
"Lessons" are taught in story format with dialogs between Mac and Barney.
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