Look what showed up on my doorstep - Zenith Trans-Oceanic T600

Just a quick post...

I'm not a huge fan of vintage 'consumer' radios and I'm usually more interested in amateur radios, but my best friend told me he had a radio that was headed to the dumpster and asked if I wanted it. I said "Sure, why not".

God loves geeks too!
Why Jesus?

The T600 closed
The T600 closed

When this radio first appeared on my doorstep, I didn't know the first thing about it, other than it was old and it was a tube radio. After some digging, I've become somewhat familiar with it, vacuumed it out and quickly wiped it down. I have not turned it on yet because I know that one bad old capacitor can absolutely destroy surrounding components, so I instead disassembled the radio and took stock of the situation.

The T600 open
The T600 open

Overall the radio is in fair shape for its age. I found a date stamp of April 25 1955 inside the case. It looks like someone might have tried to update one of the capacitors because there was a 1970's / 1980's model electrolytic capacitor among the old 1950's ones. One tube looks completely open to outside air and not sure about the status of the others.

The T600 chassis
The T600 chassis

This will be one of those long-term restoration projects. I've watched plenty of Mr. Carlson's Lab restoration videos, but when it's me personally doing the restoration, without all of Mr. Carlson's budget or helpful test gear, I am going to take it slow. I definitely will use this radio regularly once it's restored, but there's no rush to get it up and going right this moment.

I will try to post updates during the restoration process, but there are so many other Zenith Trans-Oceanic restoration resources out there that my experience isn't going to be ultra-helpful to someone else compared to those experienced guys.

So grateful to my friend for going out of his way to bring this radio and grateful to God that I have such an awesome brother in Christ!

God bless you, and thank you for reading! Emoji of face grinning big

About me
First and foremost I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. After that, I'm a blessed husband, father and grandfather. I do remote computer work for a living although it's mostly part-time. I'm an amateur radio operator - AF7EC. When I'm not working on the endless list of house and car projects, I like to tinker with electronics, like to listen to shortwave radio and write software (mostly open-source) in C, C++, Python and Free Pascal. I usually run Linux as my main operating system but sometimes I'm forced to endure macOS and Windows 11 for gaming with my son or testing software. Overall, I am a big nobody, but always willing to share about Jesus and all that God has done for me and my family.

 

Comments

(No comments yet)

 

Post A Comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address: (Will not be seen or used by anyone else but me)

To help cut down on spam, what do you get when you add two and four?:

Please type your message below: (Please limit message to less than 1,000 characters)

By submitting your comment, you consent to me posting it on my site.

All submissions are moderated before being posted and any profanity or sensitive information blanked out.

My Story   |   Today God is First!   |   Autism
 
This page should pass HTML validation. Standards-compliance is important to me.