I have an old US Navy scope but I have no idea of the USM model. I bought 
it at a hamfest back in the mid-1970's when I was a kid for $5. It was made 
by Dumont no less! The thing weighs a ton. The 5JP1 tube was bad and it 
needed to be recapped. My maternal grandfather gifted me a new tube that he 
got at Liberty Electronics in New York City. The capacitors I had to 
special order at Lafayette Radio and they came in in drips and drabs 
(thankfully - I did not have a lot of money). I also managed to blow the 
991 neon regulator bulb and a good friend of my fathers who worked as a 
transmitter technician for WVIT-TV in Hartford sent me a replacement. I 
also managed to track down a user manual at the time as it turned out that 
Fairchild had bought out what remained of Dumont and had their intellectual 
property. The original Dumont manual has a Fairchild cover stapled to it. 
Funny how one could get information and parts without the Internet back 
then.

I still have it though I have not turned it on in probably 20 years. I 
would have to hook it up to my variac and slowly power it up again to allow 
the capacitors to reform. I have not had much use for a scope these days 
and if I did, I would get a device that interfaced to my PC.


On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 4:31:09 PM UTC-5 gregebert wrote:

> What's even more interesting is that a lot of these old dinosaurs still 
> work. A friend at work gave me a US Navy scope (USM-117) from the early 
> 1960's, and at first it was having some problems generating high-enough 
> anode voltage for the CRT, but letting it run a few hours apparently coaxed 
> the capacitors into working again. The other neat thing about this scope is 
> that the only vacuum tube is the CRT; everything else is transistors which 
> was quite a feat for 1963.
>
> Many of our beloved nixies and CRTs are approaching, and even exceeding, 
> 60 years old and I am in awe of the fact the vacuum seals apparently are 
> still holding.
>
> On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 11:38:28 AM UTC-8 [email protected] 
> wrote:
>
>> When RCA was in its heyday, they promoted their "RCA Institutes” 
>> correspondence courses in electronics. As part of the course in
>>
>> TV/radio servicing, the students had to assemble their own test gear. 
>> This was one of those items. It is actually a rebranded Eico
>>
>> model 430 oscilloscope from the late ‘60s. I know this since I have the 
>> model 435 which appears similar but has better bandwidth.
>>
>> I have always liked the looks of this series of test equipment that Eico 
>> made during this period compared to their earlier designs.
>>
>> They are simple to use and relatively easy to fix since they don’t have 
>> sophisticated features like triggered/delayed sweep. It looks
>>
>> like you’ve scored a nice one. Good luck and enjoy!
>>
>> Rich
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 22, 2022, at 9:45 AM, martin martin <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Since we are on the subject of CRTs...  I was asked to pickup all kinds 
>> of vintage items from an "Estate Giveaway"
>>
>> Here's the first one!  More on the way, Heathkit VTVMs too..
>>
>>
>>
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