During our recent storm destruction and reconstruction, I came across a bunch of old radios buried beneath many other interesting items in our garage and workshop.

I have particular interest in this Bush DAC 41 as it has a shortwave band on it; I've been a shortwave addict since childhood when I accidentally tuned into a 'Space Info Service' from New Mexico on an old receiver we had in our house, using nothing more than a piece of long wire draped across the curtains for an aerial. Though the station called itself a Space Info Service, it turned out to be some crazy guy in the desert with his own transmitter predicting the human race was about to die at the hands of aliens and we needed to relocate to the Moon or Mars immediately. Being able to sit in my living room in rural Ireland and hear this through a 1950s radio I had saved from being dumped, opened a whole new world to me.

I've never understood why HF-receiving isn't a hobby for a greater number of people. I can't describe the excitement of the first time I managed to pick up Australia (and many other distant locations) on such a basic set-up. In time, I did upgrade my receiving station to more expensive equipment, but that's not necessary for the casual listener, and the best aerial you'll ever have is a long piece of wire draped as far as you can drape it.

Another very enjoyable part of shortwave-listening is QSL cards, and the free gifts you will generally receive along with them. QSL cards are the written confirmation of reception of a signal. To get one, you write to the station you've listened to, with proof that you did indeed hear the station (listing the frequency you heard it on, what song was playing or what topic the presenters were discussing, what time you heard it at, the signal strength and quality, and any other info) and if it's proven that you were listening to the correct station (it can often be difficult to tell with High Frequency signals being so noisy), they'll send back a QSL card, and generally a bag of goodies to accompany it. I grew up receiving piles of mail from all over the world every day. The Middle East propaganda stations in Iraq and Kuwait were particularly generous, always sending calendars just after Christmas and other gifts during the year, though I only ever made contact with them once. Even still, many years later, a calendar, notebook and pens arrive from Radio Free Kuwait. Iraq, well.. I don't hear from them much anymore.

Of course, I spent the majority of my listening time tuning into the HF air traffic control centres around the world. With Shanwick nearby, I used my listening-hobby as an excuse to spend many occasions at the centre with the controllers witnessing the communications first hand.

The African HF ATC stations were generally very interesting to tune into, while Gander, Santa Maria, New York and Shannon were my bedtime listening every night, with the HF signal being much stronger and clearer during the hours of darkness.

Through the early part of the last century, anyone could tune in to the news from America or other destinations across the world. Today, few know there's anything other than their local FM stations available. Strange how this happens as technology moves forward.

For anyone interested in delving into shortwave-listening a little further, you may want to check out this site, a fantastic resource if you'd like to hear what HF sounds like, but not enough to consider yourself a shortwave listener, at least in my opinion. To me, the hobby is about messing around with old radios and figuring out where best to point your long wire antenna. While digitally tuning into web-controlled receivers is easily-accessible for all, it's far more exciting to slowly and carefully adjust the dial beneath your fingers, hoping to come across that distant station.

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I've decided if I put a page up on my site to follow my rebuild progress with this DAC41, then it may be enough to keep me determined to work on it.

                       Click here to see high quality versions of the above and more.

The radio is hardly in good shape; the power lead is cut off, I assume for a very good reason. There are some wires thrown in loose, no longer attached to whatever they were once attached to. I haven't removed the chassis yet to see how bad it looks in there. All of the wiring is rotting and crumbles away with a light touch. The exterior is fairly rough and one of the knobs will need to be replaced.

The problem with these old radios is that many of them have a live chassis, so the metal work inside the radio may be live and connected to the mains. In other words, you touch, you die. You also have to be very careful with any exposed screws or other metal work on the outside of the radio.

So I certainly won't be hooking this one up to the mains until I've replaced all of the wiring, and probably the valves and numerous other internal components.

I'll probably make an attempt to start with the wiring replacement tonight, and disassemble the internal workings while I'm at it. Some probing with the multi-metre should tell me where to go from here.

Stay tuned!

So I've managed to squeeze a couple of hours in to tackle the radio. I'd read the control knobs can be painful to remove, but three came off all too easily, with quite a bit of applied pressure. They're connected directly to the chassis by a shaft through the woodwork, so in order to remove the chassis, the knobs had to come off.  The fourth was not so easy to remove. After too long prying it with the vice-grips and screwdriver and no WD40 at hand, I decided to just break the thing off. Then, just before planned destruction, it finally decided to come free.

The chassis is connected to the speaker by quite a few rubber wires, all of which were crumbling away with the lightest touch. I had intended to remove the speaker and its plate along with the chassis, but the wires decided to set the chassis free alone. I've trimmed them back to their pre-crumbling stages but will probably have to replace much of the wiring later anyway, so I'm not too worried about losing a few.

I couldn't see what was hiding beneath the chassis until I removed it, and I'll admit it was a bit of a surprise.

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There's a lot more going on in there than I expected, and having very little in the lines of quality diagrams makes it a little more challenging.

I'll take this stage slowly though and any removal/replacement that needs to be done will happen wire by wire. One at a time. Turns out most of these wires actually had individual colours to them after being cleaned. Everything initially appeared to be of a brown-nature.

The next step involved me getting at the chassis top with two toothbrushes in a forensic-like operation to extract the thick pile of dust, layer by layer. It doesn't seem to be in bad shape now that it's been cleaned up a little, though I wouldn't rule anything out just yet. The fact that my father (a genius with repairing the most complicated of technical problems) never bothered to fix this thing up makes me wonder. I'm hoping he simply didn't have the time. 

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Someone pointed out to me that it says 'A.C.12' for radio type on the back. I'm not sure what to make of that. I had initially been searching for info under that model type but when I finally came across something, the radio looked totally different, inside and out. I then came across the website with the Bush Service Manuals and noticed the 41 model is exactly what I seem to have. So I'll call it a DAC41 until proven otherwise.

Next I'll probably build a Series Lamp Limiter, if time permits, as advised by the UK Vintage Radio Repair&Restoration Association who have so far been very, very helpful with supplying info. The limiter involves connecting a 100W lamp bulb in series with the supply to the set. This limits the maximum current flowing through a potentially faulty set, preventing anything too nasty from happening. The glow of the lamp's filament should also tell you if the set is running okay or not. The lower supply of voltage may prevent the set from working as it should, but it will be enough voltage to know if there are any serious problems with the set.

So I've proven the radio is in fact an A.C. 12 rather than a DAC41. There initially seemed to be no such thing as an A.C.12 so I didn't want to go and name it that, especially when it appeared to be identical to the 41 model.

Googling "Bush AC12" brought up one hit (and a bunch of random sites which had nothing to do with what I was looking for), but the Bush AC12 I found online is a completely different model with the same name. After a couple of days of confusion, (perhaps my radio was in the wrong cabinet?), I decided to shoot an e-mail to the webmaster of the site with the AC12. He replied immediately telling me "Your radio will have been manufactured by Bush in their Dublin factory.  The Irish models had different model numbers to the UK models but shared in some cases the same chassis.   Your set looks like it has a UK AC41 chassis in it -  does it have LW or two SW bands instead? The DAC41 does not have a mains transformer but instead uses a dropper resistor.  It will probably have an Irish Free State label on it somewhere inside. Irish Bush models are quite rare,  even in Ireland so hang on to it. I will have one of those white knobs if you need it."

My model has both a longwave AND a shortwave band. I'm happy to hear it may be on the rarer side of things, but that means I'm service manual-less. The DAC41 diagrams are incredibly close, but my model doesn't do DC, just AC.

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Tonight I removed the remaining components (speaker, etc) which were left in the cabinet. Again, quite difficult to open some of the screws without breaking anything, but mission successful!

All looking well in that department.

I'm worried about the cabinet; the wood near the base is crumbling away with a gentle touch. The dreaded woodworm has attacked at some point I guess (which probably explains some of the large piles of dust inside the cabinet). It doesn't appear to be a current issue but I've treated the cabinet now, just in case.

The random white wire which was thrown in loose doesn't appear to have been connected to anything, or at least I haven't found any broken connections as of yet. It may have been used as an aerial perhaps.

There are a few brown, residue-covered capacitors that don't look so hectic, but otherwise, things look pretty good!

A co-worker is renting a thatched cottage in the locality which has a Phillips valve radio as an ornament, not in working condition. I decided to be cheeky and open it up yesterday, and was delighted to find that it has at least two of the same valves as my set. I couldn't find figures on the other valves, but the ones in my set LOOK okay, though I can't really be sure until I test it.

On Saturday, I will hopefully have time to build the series limiter, finally get into the set with the multimeter, and prepare to power this thing up. Eek! Wish me luck..

Had a look around the garage and workshop on Friday evening and gathered as many of the supplies as I could find to build the series lamp limiter.

I only had to buy a couple of the components, so the whole thing is costing me about 4 Euros. Not bad at all!

I already mentioned what the limiter does - it works like a resistor - but in case you've forgotten, check this page out.

My limiter has a twin socket because that's what was available to me for free. I'll only be using one side of it though.

I had the great misfortune of opening the switched socket further than I needed to, and the entire contents (lots of little brass plates) fell out. That's not something I've ever done before, and I'll NEVER open one again. I'm baffled as to how these things are assembled at the factory.

I should've taken a pic but I was too depressed at the thought of having to reassemble it. I didn't see where they fell from and spent too long trying to figure where they fell to, lost in the carpet.

I eventually located them and put all of the little plates and their holders back into where they belonged, taping the switches down on the exterior to hold them in place. I screwed the thing back together, then pressed the switches, but they wouldn't budge. AGH!!

Opened up the socket again and put all of the tiny little plates in the other direction, resealed and gave it another go. Thankfully this time, the switches would depress.

I removed the valves from the radio and cleaned them up. You can see them in the pic, above the limiter. They're ECH42, EL41, EF41, EBC41 and EZ40.

The speaker feels rather 'crunchy' when light pressure is applied, so it's probably in poor shape, but I'm not too worried about that.

I treated the cabinet for woodworm, though it seems that only the very bottom edges have a problem. The rest doesn't have any little holes and feels fairly sturdy, so it may be better than I first thought. I don't believe the woodworm is current, but it's no harm to treat it anyway, just in case.

I left the cabinet on its own to pollute the atmosphere with its worm-killing chemicals, and decided to move the workshop into the warm living-room for the night. How delighted my mother was!

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I cut the wires back to their pre-rot phase and soldered them back together.

I'm going to do some research now and see if I can find replacement parts, just in case I'll need them.