"Colin B." wrote in message ...
Barry Mann wrote:
In , on 04/22/04
at 09:55 PM, "Colin B." said:

[ ... ]
So what DOES cause the whiskers to grow? And is there any hope of
aligning a tuner with typical bench equipment (DVM, scope, signal
generator)?
[ ... ]

It's a metallurgical problem, crystal growth. Some alloys do it, some
don't. I don't understand why they use that alloy in tuning capacitors.
They knew about this problem at least by the 50's, maybe earlier. I've
heard some concern that the new lead free solders may have this
problem. (won't that be fun)

Oh joy. As if the problems with lead-free solder weren't significant enough
already!

Regardless, blowing out the tuning capacitor fixed up the tuner beautifully!
Better than I expected, in fact; the tuning dial offset (93.7 appeared at
94.1) disappeared, which makes me think that it might not need an alignment
at all.

Thanks!
Colin

If that thing's old enough to have a dial cord then you can usually
tune in a a station, secure the knob to keep it from turning, and move
the dial indicator along the cord until it's at the spot on the dial
corresponding to that station's frequency. If the other stations show
up at the right place on the dial you're home free. It's only when
reception band is "wider" or "narrower" than the width of the dial
that alignment is usually called for and if it's not too far off it's
probably best to leave well enough alone (even though leaving well
enough alone is not a concept with which I've had a lot of practical
experience :-).