The 1946 Hallicrafters S-40 radio turned out to be easy to diagnose – as is often the case with these old radios, the capacitors had seen better days. The worst offender was a canister triple that was leaking badly as you can see in the picture below. That yellow material near the bottom of the square area is capacitor guts that have leaked out.
So rather than just replace that capacitor, I ordered up a full set and replaced all the old electrolytic and paper caps. Here is the bottom of the radio with the new caps installed.
And here is the collection of old caps that were removed.
The radio works great! I attached a small loop antenna and was able to pick up an incredible number of stations on shortwave last night. And it comes with that nice odor of musty old tubes when they get hot. Very enjoyable.
Back to the B-17B – now that the remainder of parts have arrived installation has begun. The main part of the power supply is built. Here is the top of the prototype.
And the backside as it looks now. Still a lot more to build…
