Hi guys,
I'm going to start a fresh post here. My alignment questions could be a thread of their own. I have a big list of questions. If you want to help me with one, that's one less that I'm confused on, no problem.
Alignment always tricks me up. It seems that so many people do it different ways. Here are my questions. This is the last haul on my radio. All components have been replaced, so I think it will benefit from a fresh alignment.

1) For the 1st operation, connect sig. gen. to 1st detector grid. That's the 6A8G tube grid, right?

2) For the dummy antenna, that clips to the red lead right and then I use the cap lead to clip to the grid pin/antenna post right? (My sig gen doesn't have a cap built in, I should do that). Can I just use a .01-.05 cap for all of the dummy antennas? Or must it be 200mmfd and 1/2Mfd? When it comes time to use the resistor. I don't have that resistor they call for, what else can I use?

3) Do I clip the black lead of the sig. gen. to the chassis at all times?

4) How do I hook up my output meter to this one for quiet alignment so I can have the volume all the way down. I don't know how to find /which side of the AVC circuit to clip my leads. Where does the meters black lead go for this? Chassis?

5) I should keep lowering my sig. gen. output as I go right? Just curious so I know I'm doing it right (this always frustrates me) what peak voltages am I looking for. Like what range? Max negative, right?

6) What do they mean by rock gang and adjust for max. output?

7) The note is "Adjust wave trap (E) for minimum interference". Where is "E"? I see on the schematic that it's near the ground terminal, I'm guessing under the chassis. I have to look and see if there is a trimmer near there.

Should output meter be on AC or DC when using the AVC circuit? I'm not positive but I think it's DC for AVC and AC when measuring speaker output. Would it be better to hook the meter to the speaker output?

9) I don't have an alignment screw driver, just a plain jane screw driver. Is that going to affect my alignment?

10) I'm wondering now, is it possible to skip all the physical connections and do this inductively with a coil of copper wire, and then just have the black lead to chassis??

I think that's all for now. Sorry for so many questions. Alignment always trips me up. I have to remember to set it to 456KC for the IFs! That's a new one.

Thanks guys!

Very briefly:

1. Correct
2. .01 should be fine
3. Yes but very importanty be sure to use an isolation transformer when working on an AC/DC set
4. You can sub a 4 ohm 5 watt resistor for voice coil and still measure output AC voltage on the winding preferably with analog meter.
5. Use minimum signal needed to produce readable output
6. Rock tuning capacitor back and forth slightly to lock onto your signal.
7. Skip, police band is obsolete
8. Correct
9. Best fashion tool from chopstick or plastic rod. Assortments of proper alignment tools also available from suppliers.
10. You can take a TP cardboard, wind 20 turns of wire around it, and hook one end to shield and other end through a small cap to signal.

You'll probably get more opinions and tips.

codefox covered it well. I can't recall the last time I went thru the rigamarole of hooking a SG to the grid, dummy antenna, etc. It just isn't necessary in a working radio. Now if everything has been 'unaligned' by a Golden Screwdriver then you may have to. You can couple inductively or just connect the SG to the ant terminal.

I think I'll just connect the hot lead of the signal generator to the antenna terminal through a small cap, and then just clip the black lead straight to chassis. Sound good?

How should I connect my meter? I only have a DMM at this time though. I see in Elements of Radio Servicing I can clip the red lead to the plate of the AF amplifier (6F6) and ground lead to chassis. Does that sound good??

To set the needles up, the plates should be fully closed, but how do I position BOTH needles?

When adjusting the IF cans, Elements says to short the oscillator padder to the vari. cap frame, do I really have to do that?

I know this is a lot of questions. I'm just trying to get a good feel for this, I want to do it right the first time and not have to worry later.
Thanks guys

Bump

1. Yes, you can connect that way. I don't have an isolation xfmr so I usually skip connecting to the chassis.

2. Yes, you can do it that way. AC scale on the meter.

3. Don't know what you mean there. Needles?

4. No, not necessary. Some alignment info has you do that to kill the oscillator so that you don't inadvertently tune onto a harmonic of the signal generator. Just set the radio dial to a quiet spot down around 600 and you'll be ok.

Hey, don't count on getting it *right* the first time. Take your time with it and call it a learning experience. You'll probably be unsure about some things, learn some new things as you go along, and wind up doing the procedure several times before you're satisfied!

HTH

By needles I mean pointers, sorry about that. I call them needles for some reason
There's a gold one, and then the fast red one, how should I position them before I begin?

Okay, I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes, thank you Mr. Shirley.

Ok, I understand the needles thing now. Generally you just fully close the tuning cap and manually adjust the pointer/needle at the bottom end of the dial range. Some radios even have a little tic on the dial specifically for that purpose.

For your question #2, the signal generator lead, this is a possibility:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCREW-ON-SIGNAL ... 27c844c13c

The quality of the materials and workmanship is the very highest. And it works.

Bill

Alignment is where you get to see if you did your restoration of the circuit in a competent or workmanlike way. It's amazing how much better a properly adjusted set will receive! But, see below.

As you mentioned it's preferable to make sure you're done replacing components before diving in to a full alignment.
Tubes, capacitors, and lead dress will change the alignment. It's also possible to bugger it up so as to make the dang thing useless if you get turned around. Excessive twiddling tends to loosen the cores and trimmers and padders, so it's important to understand that alignment is not a troubleshooting technique but a semi-permanent setting.

When you put the radio through its paces, you can get an idea of the quality of the alignment by comparing the sensitivity of the receiver for distant, low power signals and selectivity between adjacent stations, in addition to the accuracy of the dial indications. If the radio exhibits good characteristics here, then the alignment is close. The lack of sibilance and good tone, and freedom from overload on strong locals means the AVC is working. Oftentimes radios show weakness on the low end of the dial - a common complaint. Sometimes it's shorted plates on the tuning cap, but also an alignment issue.

When you set the low end of the dial on sets with padders and such and it says "rock the dial" what they mean is, peak the setting where you find it to some degree, rather than a strict dial accuracy like you did with the high end. It's possible to align the RF so the dial indication for stations is perfect but the radio is practically deaf on the low end. If a radio is working well make a note or count turns so you can get the trimmer back close to where it was.

Okay I tried, I honestly hate alignments. I set my sig. gen to 456KC and the instructions say to set the radio to 600KC. I do that (after I set the needles up at 550KC with vari. cap fully engaged). But I don't hear a tone anywhere near 600KC, so I scan around the dial, and here a tone at 1000KC, so then I tweaked the IF cans for peak response, continuing to lower the RF as I tweak.
So that I wasn't confident on. Then I'm assuming the wave trap is on the back next to the antenna terminal, I know it's not necessary but I tweaked it a tiny bit to get "minimum interference" and nothing changed, just some static.
Not confident about that.
Then I went on to adjust trimmer "F" the oscillator one. Set the sig. gen to 1500. Set the radio to 1500. Do I hear a tone? NO. Other places I can hear the tone, like a little after 1500 on the dial. But there the tone was very loud even with the attentuator all the way down.

What am I doing wrong?

Could be you are not doing anything wrong. You should get a frequency counter (inexpensive digital ones are available.) to determine the accuracy of your signal generator. If it is an old one like mine, the dial settings will be off by a little. Check accuracy with modulation off.

Yes, you will get signals on many harmonics and sub-harmonics, but the correct one should be the strongest. If someone with a "golden Screwdriver" got into the set before you, anything is possible. I had a set which was screwed down to around 262 KHZ but in fact was supposed to be 455 KHZ. What a mess!

I've got a frequency counter which appears to be right on with my signal generator. When I'm checking for a reading should I set the sig. gen. to EXT. It has a BNC counter port on it.
I just don't understand why the instructions say to set the dial to 600 and the sig. gen. to 456. But no tone is coming through. Does that mean it's out of alignment? I didn't think the alignment was that off, I don't know if it's a good idea to tweak the IFs until I hear a tone at 600. Is that what I should do? I tweaked them at 1000 as opposed to 600 because that's where the tone was coming through, but I don't think that was correct either.

Tweaking at ~1000 on the dial probably means that you tweaked the second harmonic of the SG.

Go back. The dial is set at ~600 - just make sure that's a clear spot. Get your SG tuned back onto the IF freq. Crank it up to max output. Connect to antenna terminal. Make sure audio modulation is turned on on the SG.

You should hear the tone, maybe faintly, all the way across the dial of the radio. If its blasting away then back down on the SG output. Yes, there will be a stronger signal at around 910 but that's not what you want. You want that lower level tone that's all across the band which will probably be stronger at the low end (that's why 600) . Give the IF adjustments a quick tweak by ear to get back in the ballpark before fiddling with meters and stuff.

Can't hear the tone at all as described above? If no, then detune the wavetrap a few turns. If you can't hear it after that then I'll explain how to find it. Its probably detuned now to some off-the-wall frequency.

Don't think it makes a difference what the audio modulation is, most built in's are 600 hz. An analog meter is best for reading audio output if that;s what you want to do. You can sub an 8 ohm resistor for the voice coil if the noise bothers you. Follow allignment instructions. If it says set radio dial at 600 KZ, then do that. Ramp up the output of the signal generator so you can get a peak at the if according to alignment procedure, then go through a second time with decreased signal generator output to fine tune. If you are at or near either extreme of an adjustment slug or padder you are tuning to a harmonic.

Because you don't care (much) what the RF front end is doing. All you are trying to do is get 456 into the IF section to tweak the IF transformers to peak it. It doesn't make much difference how you do it.

If you can't hear anything at the IF frequency, you may need to hook it to the tuning cap or grid of the mixer to get enough transfer function to hear it and get it close. If that still doesn't work you may have another issue that will require repair. If it's just off, you can move the signal generator frequency around until you hear it, then you can determine how far off it is.

Brett

Okay I managed to hear that faint tone at ~600 at 456KC, then I peaked all the IF trimmers up, lowered output, peaked some more, lowered output. That I think I'm OK on.
Then onto the wave trap, this time I left it be. But now I'm afraid it could be "off". If I tighten it all the way, how many turns ABOUT should I back it out so it's at least in the ball park?
I think I adjusted oscillator trimmer F OK.
Then I went for antenna trimmer alignment on top of vari. cap. Seemed to be OK.
Then onto trimmer J (that trimmer on the chassis between the IF cans and vari. cap. , buried in there). Dials set to 600, sig. gen. 600. Everything seemed okay.
Then I repeated steps 3 and 4 (trimmers F and G / oscillator and antenna trimmers). I was able to peak them up A LOT more for some reason, why's that?

Then it went down hill when I switched to the shortwave band. I left the small cap on for the dummy antenna, i didn't switch to the resistor (could this really be a problem?)
For the life of me I couldn't get my frequency counter to exactly 18000, 16500 MC. Maybe 18,134 or 18,212, but not right on. Always off my 50 or more MC. The numbers just kept bouncing around with the slightest touch of the signal generator. What's my problem there?

Then I switched to police band and got my freq. counter to as close to 5500 as possible and adjusted the trimmer for that. Although police band is dead I suppose.

For the "rock gang" adjustments, I seemed to have found that there is no max output, it's so fine, there's either a tone, or silence. Even after I tweak.........what's up there?

Basic question, I notice when you go crazy on a trimmer turning it, you can hear sometimes the tone twice. Is it safe to say that when the trimmer is tightened and you hear a tone, that's a harmonic, but as you loosen the trimmer, the next tone you here is the one you want?

I also really need to concoct a plastic screw driver or some sort. I've been using the metal one and especially on trimmer K for shortwave, I could HEAR the clanking of the screw driver near the trimmer IN the speaker. Also as the screw driver got closer to the trimmer, the tone got substantially louder. I hope I didn't fry anything.

I tried playing the radio after all of this and I picked up one station on broadcast............................................................I don't even know. I'm pretty sure all I got out of this was extra mileage on the tranny and tubes. I'm going to take a breather and try to concoct a plastic screw driver.

Sounds like you're in the right direction.

Comments...
1. The wavetrap is done after you're finished with the IF alignment. Basically you just tune in your IF signal like you just did and adjust the wavetrap for MINIMUM signal.

2. Frequency counter is probably flickering around because of the audio modulation from the sig gen. Turn off the modulation and see if it settles down. Of course you need it ON for alignment so take your reading, etc. Some counters are affected more than others.

3. Dual peak on the antenna trimmers. I know what you mean but I don't know a good rule of thumb.

Maybe - but depending on what signal generator it is, the difference between 18.1 and 18.2 might be a few thousands of an inch on the indicator. The scale that contains 18 MHZ on mine goes fro, 10 to 35. Trying to pick 100 khz out of it is going to be tricky no matter what you are doing.

I use my digital PLL radio to set the generator, and it's pretty tricky to get it adjusted to that degree of accuracy without a lot of work. I usually use WWV when possible for the oscillator setting. The other alignments (mixer and/or antenna) don't care much what frequency you use, that's the essence of the "requirement of rocking the gang".

Brett

True. I use a RCA WR-50B and although the printed scale isn't very good it does read ok on the counter once you breathe on it right. The modulation sends the counter nutso and if you turn off the modulation it reads steady. The counter reads steady down at BCB regardless of modulation but up on the SW freqs its like picker describes.