Homestead Wood Radio For Sale

1) This is the chassis for a wooded radio I picked up at a garage sale. It is licensed by RCA as a Homestead Radio. This shot of the chassis shows the under side with all of the old caps and the shock absorbers missing. Actually they rotted away. Note that there is only one electrolytic in the whole radio. This is a DC model so there is no internal power supply.

2) Here is the bottom of the chassis with all new caps installed. The new shock absorbers are also in place. All of the grid cap wires had to be replaced due to cracked insullation. I could not find a schematic so I had to reverse engineer a copy.

3) When I purchased the radio, the dial cord was broken and there was no way to document the way it was strung. I will have to experiment with different combinations until I get it right.

4) Finally got the dial cord installed. The dial pointer goes the same direction as the knob and the capacitor and frequency of the face are in sync. This was no small task. the dial cord was broke when I bought the radio. There is a blemish on the dial face that is due to something that was jammed into the plastic dial cover and through the face.

5) This shot of the cabinet is after sanding all of the old finish off and two coats of Tung oil were applied. There are four stripes that will have to be finished with a dark brown lacquer. The dial face hole was painted with a black lacquer. The interior of the cabinet will be painted satin black.

6) I built a battery eliminator and decided to put it in a cherry wood box and add a loop antenna to make a package that would be as funtional as well as good looking.

7) The chassis cleaned up OK but there are a number of rust spots that I plan to leave alone. I think the rust is easier to look at than the damage I would create trying to sand them out. The wire on the left is for an external antenna, and the wire on the right is for the battery. At this point I plan to build a loop antenna and battery eliminator combination to go with the radio.

8) Here is the back of the battery eliminator chassis withthe electronics inside. I still have to add a heat sink to help disapte some of the waste power. the output of the eliminator ia 1.4V for the A supply and 88V for the B supply.

9) Here is a photo of the eliminator chassis with the loop antenna frame sitting on top.

10) I built a loop antenna with 2 foot sides. I thought this would be too large for the Homestead companion chassis. The bigger the loop the better the performance, but the larger size is too difficult to set on a table top. The Homestead radio companion chassis has a 16 inch side dimension. There will be one cable connecting the two chassis boxes. Power and antenna signals will be in the same cable.

11) The Homestead portable radio is complete and working. First long distant station that I tuned to was in Texas. Not bad for mid afternoon in Iowa. The only antenna used was the 16" loop antenna that is part of the power supply.

12)The antenna and power supply work very well with the Homestead radio. The A and B battery eliminator puts out 1.43 VDC and 91 VDC when connected to the radio. I ran the radio for 1 hour and found the power supply heat sink to be luke warm to the touch. Just right. The antenna tuning is very sharp at the higher frequency side of the band as you expect. Directivity, gain, and tuning are all great with just 16" on a side. The felt pads on the bottom help when you want to find the location of the station without scratching the surface of your furniture.

13) The two together make a good looking pair. They work together well too. I found a bad volume Pot when I first turned the radio on. As soon as I find a replacement I plan to log as many stations as I can before the pair are sold.