Hi,I have a telefunken with am,shortwave and european fm(goes from 88 to 100).The shortwave and fm work great but the am will hardly pick up anything.Even with a 50 foot antenna it will only pick up the two strongest signals which are about a mile from me.I do not have access to a signal generator to do a tune up and was wondering ig there was something I could do otherwise to get it working?Thanks to everyone for any help.Ira.

Hi,
If the reception is poor for just AM, it might have a faulty capacitor in the oscillator circuit, and/or the RF coils have a fautly cap, cold solder joint, dirty switch contact, or even a bad coil winding (either a burned out winding or a cold solder joint- but some of those used a "tickler winding which is only connected on one side of the winding.

If each band has it's own second detector stage, ( if "Solid State"- Namely crystal diodes),The diodes may have excessive leakage, or high contact resistance.

As for aligningment, once you have identified which "IFs", "RFs", and trimmer/padders are for AM and Shortwave, (AM and Shortwave should share IF's, but not oscillators, or padders), you can peak each IF for the loudest signal at the extremehigh end of each band, locate one that is audible, and peak the IF's for that frequency, then adjust the oscilaltor coil to line up a signal on a known frequency, such as WWVV on15 MHZ or 20 Mhz. Then tune to the low end of the dial, and adjust the padder to line up a known station on the dial, then check for how accurately it tracks across the dial. If this is acceptable, peak the antenna trimmer on a station at the high end of the dial. Check your known frequencies on the dial to see if they are close enough for you, and if they are, you are done.

Skip the FM, as attempting to align the FM signals without a frequency generator is tough at best, and the best you can hope for is just being "close enough".

:Hi,I have a telefunken with am,shortwave and european fm(goes from 88 to 100).The shortwave and fm work great but the am will hardly pick up anything.Even with a 50 foot antenna it will only pick up the two strongest signals which are about a mile from me.I do not have access to a signal generator to do a tune up and was wondering ig there was something I could do otherwise to get it working?Thanks to everyone for any help.Ira.

Hello Ira,
First: please do not adjust trimmers and coils. Only in very very exeptional cases this is needed.
In your case I believe that the tuning-capacitor do have a short-circuit, or the mixer/antenna ampl. tube has some grid-current.
For the last item: check tensions on grids, the other item: loos all the wires of the capacitor and discharge a large elco on it. normaly the oxyde will be burned away and you can use it again.

good luck!
Ton
P.S.: I do have a schematic diagram of it.

:Hi,
:If the reception is poor for just AM, it might have a faulty capacitor in the oscillator circuit, and/or the RF coils have a fautly cap, cold solder joint, dirty switch contact, or even a bad coil winding (either a burned out winding or a cold solder joint- but some of those used a "tickler winding which is only connected on one side of the winding.
:
:If each band has it's own second detector stage, ( if "Solid State"- Namely crystal diodes),The diodes may have excessive leakage, or high contact resistance.
:
:As for aligningment, once you have identified which "IFs", "RFs", and trimmer/padders are for AM and Shortwave, (AM and Shortwave should share IF's, but not oscillators, or padders), you can peak each IF for the loudest signal at the extremehigh end of each band, locate one that is audible, and peak the IF's for that frequency, then adjust the oscilaltor coil to line up a signal on a known frequency, such as WWVV on15 MHZ or 20 Mhz. Then tune to the low end of the dial, and adjust the padder to line up a known station on the dial, then check for how accurately it tracks across the dial. If this is acceptable, peak the antenna trimmer on a station at the high end of the dial. Check your known frequencies on the dial to see if they are close enough for you, and if they are, you are done.
:
:Skip the FM, as attempting to align the FM signals without a frequency generator is tough at best, and the best you can hope for is just being "close enough".
:
:
::Hi,I have a telefunken with am,shortwave and european fm(goes from 88 to 100).The shortwave and fm work great but the am will hardly pick up anything.Even with a 50 foot antenna it will only pick up the two strongest signals which are about a mile from me.I do not have access to a signal generator to do a tune up and was wondering ig there was something I could do otherwise to get it working?Thanks to everyone for any help.Ira.