Vaccum Tube (II)

As I posted a month ago we started experiments with vacuum tubes. We decided to restore an old radio that has been part of our department since its foundation, back in the late sixties.  We had this radio with us and nobody knows when or where it came from. Our most senior technician, who join the department in 1972, says that when he started to work at the university the radio was already there. The radio is a 1960's vacuum tube receptor.

Eddystone 850-2

Our project was to restore this English brand radio. Wrongly, the first thing we did was to try to power it. Rapidly, we realized vacuum tubes were mess up. Along the years people had played with the tubes and they were located in wrong positions. Also, the radio lacked several tubes.

So, we tried another approach. We surfed the web and download its manual. We spend more than two days studying the manual. Also, we did a trip to visit people we thought they could keep vacuum tubes. We had no luck. The vacuum tubes were not possible to be found here in El Salvador.

The tube center
I decided that the only way to continue with our project was to buy them. I was lucky. A quick search took me to an American company located in Orlando, Florida. They had all of them but one. However they offered me an equivalent. So I purchase all of them (eleven tubes). In less than an hour I knew how much I had to pay; US$49.00 plus shipment. Below, I show the list:

1.   6BA6 (CV454)       @ 4.00 = 12.00
2.  6AJ8 (CV2128)           5.00
3.  6AL5 (CV140)            3.00
4.  6AU6 (CV2524)          3.00
5.  6AT6 (CV452)            3.00
6.  6AM5 (CV136)         10.00
7.  6BE6 (CV453)             3.00
8.  VR150/30(CV216)      4.00
9.  5Z4G (CV1863) NOT AVAILABLE, ONLY 5Z4 METAL  6.00

It took three weeks to arrive. Last Friday I got them. However, the final price almost doubled. US$16.00 shipment, US$11.00 local taxes, and US$5.00 for a taxi trip.