1. Introduction

I bought this radio via eBay - it arrived in a relatively good condition. It is one of only three British made valve portables of the 1950s to cover the VHF-FM band.

First impressions showed the set to be quite grubby but the cabinet cloth in good condition apart from one small tear - also the bright was missing from the tuning knob.

Internally the chassis was quite clean and appeared in good condition - only thing of notice was that the Carr clips had been removed from the HT power leads.

Whilst looking at the chassis I noticed one of the set's two tuning pointers lying in the bottom of the case - a close inspection showed the other pointer to be missing as well.

I removed the chassis and soon found out why the pointers had fallen off the drive cord - the cord itself was just about ready to come off of the flywheel, which it did as soon as I rotated the tuning knob slightly.

I re-threaded it and while doing so noticed a large paxolin strip below the cord which acted as a runner for the bottom of the tuning pointers - it was badly warped and curved.

Obviously this was why the pointers had come away - the warping had caused them to badly snag and bind against the dial glass.

I thought the second pointer missing and lost and was thinking about how to fashion a replacement, when I noticed it wedged between the frame and cone of the loudspeaker. It was badly distorted but was soon bent back into the correct shape.