David Stinson wrote:


The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.

On the antique radio forums we make a point of driving home "replace
those go***mn paper caps because they are never good". You've been
around, Dave, You should know better!
Since this post is only to the BA forum instead of cross-posting to
rar+p I can admit that the only old radio out of dozens that I have not
been compelled to wholesale recap has been an English Barker 88 which
used surplus (at the time) metal cased US war-surplus caps. They all,
100%, passed any test I could give them.
More often it makes sense to yank the old paper jobbies and place giant
Orange Globs (for the non-restuffers) ...or in your case, assume they
were ok with the resulting consequence.
FB on the expedition's results..

-Bill WX4A