Saturday, November 22, 2014

Heathkit RX-1 Recapping

I finished "recapping", i.e. replacing the paper capacitors in the Heathkit RX-1. Some were a little tricky to get at when the unit was assembled.

Here are some of the original caps:



And here is an image after recapping (the news ones are all yellow):



I didn't notice any significant difference after recapping, but it is still a good idea to do. Depending on the circuit location, a leaky capacitor can damage a tube or other expensive component. Below is all the old caps after removal:


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Heathkit RX-1 Restoration

My latest restoration project is a Heathkit RX-1 "Mohawk" Amateur Radio Receiver.


I've created YouTube video that describes it. This was Heathkit's high end amateur radio receiver of the time, with all the bells and whistles of a radio of the time. It's a large beast, weighing in at about 50 pounds.

It works, but I'm currently in the process or recapping it, to make sure that it is fully functional. I'm replacing all of the wax paper capacitors with new ones, as the original ones tend to become electrically leaky over time. This may fix the operation of the notch filter, which doesn't seem to be fully working. The circuitry around the notch filter uses a lot of paper caps.

Once that is done I will run through the alignment procedure again. As it is quite an involved procedure, that might be suitable for another YouTube video of its own.