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The preamp built into a lot of linears is poorly protected from the radio's transmit energy. Best way to "poof" the receiver preamp in your Palomar, Varmint or such is to flip the SSB switch. When you key the mike in AM, the radio's carrier will cause the linear's relay to switch over quickly...

Yeah, life was a lot more entertaining when there were no antibiotics and you could die from a bacterial bug. And before there were vaccines for fatal childhood diseases families had more kids, just so enough of them would survive to support the old folks decades down the line. High death rates...

The CPI radio was a good idea. Not enough of them were made to get the designs past the "field test" stage. Tweaks were necessary to achieve proper performance, best I remember. The Stoner radios had the same sorts of issue, a good idea not fully developed. Radios built and sold in the hundreds...

The four 2312 transistors were unobtanium for years until HG started building them. Highly sought after when they got discontinued. The 2166s are useful to anyone doing a stock repair to a Cobra 25/29, Uniden pc76/78 or any other AM only radio. 73

No other way to tell them apart. 73

The tube sockets can be rewired to put two pairs of heaters in series. This will allow the use of tubes with 6.3-Volt heaters in a Skipper that was built for 8950 tubes. 73

He's right. I remembered it wrong. Happens. 73

Had a couple of that model with this complaint a few years back. Turned out to be the AM ceramic IF filter FL1. Not too many other suspects on this list. Makes me wonder if the factory installed a bad batch of that part in one production run of this radio. 73

If you can adjust the carrier with VR6, this suggests that TR35 and TR34 are okay. C118 can block the AM transmit audio if it fails. The radio is old enough for electrolytic caps to start going bad from age alone. 73

Yeah, that's a fail. Should be 3300 ohms plus or minus 330 ohms. 73

They should last a fair while at that level. 73

Be nice to the tubes. They are getting harder to find every year. 73

Rock on, Neil. Gotta love it when a plan comes together. 73

Have a close look at the 10mm RF/IF coils with the small tuning slug. Any of them that appear to peak with the slug DEAD EVEN with the rim of the hole are part of the problem. That physical position of the tuning slug is the max inductance end of its adjustment range. As the slug unwinds...

What I remember about that amplifier was the tendency of power transformers to fail. It had two, one perched on each rear corner. This permitted you to configure it for 240 Volts, but that was the only advantage. Don't know if the problem was the transformers' build quality, but my best guess is...

The longer the wire run, the fatter it needs to be. 73

This listing says he has two of them left. https://www.ebay.com/itm/173631845249?mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&siteid=0&campid=5336136228&customid=&toolid=10001&mkevt=1 And this one says he still has three...

Is this the 'late' version with a band selector on the front? The original gray Raider was straight-ahead 11 meters. The band selector was a fig leaf over the private parts. It got them under the FCC's radar until 1979, the year 10 meters disappeared from legal ham linears. The tightened...

No question that aluminum electrolytic caps have a finite life, either in years or miles or both. Complete packages to "re-cap" a radio as they say, are being marketed. Here's a forum member's site. Mike's kits have quality capacitors only, no one-lung-sam no-name fleabay caps...

Here's where a 'scope is your best friend. Seeing what comes out of the cartridge would be the starting point. If it's working, looking at the output of the JFET would be next. No substitute for having a way to see where the parade comes to a stop. 73