Benkson radios

[Neil Purling]

The Benkson has been brought into line.
The issue was an awful lot of noise but not much in the way of signal coming through.
To me that suggested a flaw early in the IF strip.
The first IF transistor was an anonymous silicon transistor in a black encapsulation.
I swapped it for a 2N3904, hit the bullseye first shot.
Far less hiss and much more gain.
It sounds about how you would expect a 1970s portable to be. Not a massive amount of bass, yet the larger speaker & deeper case means it does not sound like a demented wasp inside a Coke can, as a pocket radio may.

Flushed with that success I decided to try and clean the dial...
Gave up that sharpish when the faded 'BENKSON' vanished forever. I was only using some wet T.P. I wiped over common soap. Doesn't make much difference when the rest of it looks like it was retrieved from the shed and dusted off.