Radio Holland 1946 RCA AR-88 "Koningin Emma" restored [RADIO]

See also:
https://kostverlorenvaart.blogspot.com/2019/09/tijes-cabinet-for-radio-holland-rca.html

This receiver belonged to a man living on Overtoom, near my home here in Amsterdam NL and after he passed away, his widow and daughter cleared out his radio shack in the attic. 

 

 

For a symbolic sum, a family living on the nearby Overtoom street here in Amsterdam gave me one of the radios that the man of the house, now deceased, had enjoyed listening to so much in his radio space on the top floor of the old house.

There is much information about the history of the RCA AR-88 on the Radio Boulevard Western Historic Radio Museum page. The one I got was produced in 1946.

A technical manual that came with the receiver, an RCA AR-88 branded as Radio Holland, suggests that the receiver has spent a number of years at sea on the Koningin Emma:

 Koningin Emma, source of photo: https://www.psdnet.nl/foto-koningin-emma/

A few pictures of the inside on the 'operating table' of Egon van Kampen working on restoration:

 

A number of vacuum tubes has been replaced, a series of capacitors was also replaced by fresh ones. Especially the 'bathtub' modules, each packing three paper/oil capacitors, were up for replacement. It's remarkable in itself how well the receiver worked even with the leaking 'bathtubs' in the circuitry:

'bathtub' capacitor container

Much about the receiver is remarkable. It looks as if it's been assembled by improvisation but if you listen to the sound it produces from the signals that it absorbs from a basic antenna, you can only be very impressed. This one is designed and built by people with a full understanding of the technique, well beyond the mere theory of the concept.

Remember, this thing is 73 years old!

And it's been all over the place. It probably helps that so many thousands were built by large teams who'd developed a perfectionist production routine to help win WWII. And this one was built when much of the production capacity was still going strong.

"Produced in large numbers for the war effort with many sent to England and Russia" says
Fred Osterman in his book Shortwave Receivers Past & Present 4th Edition Communications Receivers 1942--2013 and nowadays "very scarce".

Tuning

Tuning

These parts were replaced:

PS   Jan VDB writes:

Frans,
 
I found the the digital readout that I made for the AR88. It consists of a power supply and 74xx series electronics. The pickup electronics to tap the signal from the RF circuit is probably stil in the AR88 if it still exist. I think the counter still works. I connected it to the mains and the digits lit up. Not bad after 45 years. The connectors at the back are used to connect to the receiver. The second provides +5v to power the pickup circuit.
 
Later on I bought a modern receiver with a digital readout build in. The teletype was replaced by a ‘Tono computer’ and a TV. But it never had the charm of the bulky noisy equipment. Time was changing press agencies went to landlines.
 
I also found the first part of a description to receive RTTY signals from that time in Radio Electronica 1972. If you are interested I can send it to you via wetransfer.
The Radio Bulletin design of the counter I could not find unfortunately. It is probaly also from 1972-73.
 
Should I find a picture of the AR88 I will let you know.
 
Kind regards,
Jan