# R1155 Restored



## Shipbuilder (Jun 30, 2005)

A couple of years ago, I came across an old R1155 on a car boot sale for £15. Couldn't resist buying it as I had always fancied having one of these old Lancaster Bomber receivers. It looked fairly complete when I got it home, only the DF valves missing. Made a new power unit & also fitted an output stage inside it using a 6V6 in one of the spaces vacated by a DF valve. When I first tried it, it would only receive one station very faintly. A few electrolytics had gone down and the large square capacitor on top had bursted. Got circuit off the internet. Made a new aluminium cover for the Jones plug in bottom right hand corner & eventually got it up to almost 100% again. I don't do this sort of thing often, but couldn't help myself when I saw how forlorn it looked. After the electroniucs were fixed, I removed everything I could from front panel & case, turned up all the brass studs & steel bolts in the lathe to a "bright" finish. The ones I couldn't replace, I painted black (To cover the rust). Polished black crackle paint of case & cleaned tuning window. I can't imagine I would get another one if the opportunity arose, but it was very interesting.

Great fun, but once it was working, lost interest & sold it on Ebay for about £200.


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## K urgess (Aug 14, 2006)

Nice job, Bob. (Thumb)
I've got a completely untouched one in the loft.
Still has the connectors complete with plugs.
I used to have a T1154 but I left that with an air museum a long time ago.
All I've done to it so far is try and complete the valve set.
Becoming quite common on eBay now so the price is dropping all the time.
Marconi must have produced thousands of these during the war. 
Just about every bomber had one so with 7,374 Lancasters and 6,176 Halifaxes plus all the Sunderlands, marine craft and others that's quite a total.
The Halifax ones were mounted on their sides because of lack of space.
As with all the other projects finding the time would be good. [=P]

Cheers
Kris


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## Shipbuilder (Jun 30, 2005)

Thanks for replies. I might have kept it if the major shore stations had kept going with CW, but there was little on the HF bands to interest me once I got it going. I still dabble in radio from time to time(valves), but it is usually design & construction of simple receivers. At the moment, I am working on a four valve superhet using DK91 type valves. Built it roughly first & now that it is working, I am building it again in four separate stages (neatly). Have just made the frequency changer stage on a small sub-chassis 1" by 1.5" & it works OK on its own (1 valve superhet, I suppose), not very loud at the moment though.
Bob


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## K urgess (Aug 14, 2006)

I got mine at a jumble sail together with just about all the electronics in a wartime aircraft for a tenner because nobody else wanted the gear.
Mine's an "E" and needs a good deal of fettling.
Quite a bit of info if you Google R1155, not like when I got it and it took me 2 years to find a photo-copy of a manual even though I was curator of an air museum. [=P]
They were out of fashion and dumped in their thousands during the 80s and 90s.

Kris


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## Shipbuilder (Jun 30, 2005)

Talking about T1154,s, when I was at Wray Castle 1959/61, one of the cadets purchased a T1154 (Practical Wireless advert) for next to nothing. When it arrived, a number of us pounced on it & I remember it took a great deal of thought & ingenuity to actually get the thing out of the steel cabinet - anyone else had these problems? The same cadet (Angel) had an R1155 & I lent him my 6.3 volt transformer to power up the heaters. He connected it the wrong way round & put 250 V in the 6.3V winding & goodness knows how many volts came out of the seconadry before the fuses blew. I was in another part of the Castle at the time & the lights suddenly dimmed. I shot off down to the "practical room" to find the R1155 destroyed - every valve except the BFO was physically blown to pieces & my poor old transformer was certainly a "deader!" Anyone else remember this incident? 
Bob


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## Tai Pan (Mar 24, 2006)

on 16th May 1952 I purchased my 1155. got the receipt in front of me. Price £14.14.0 from HP Radio Services County Rd Liverpool. Brand new, came in a ,magnificent wooden box with rope handles,painted green, never been opened. The box serveed for many years as a tool box. Later purchased an 1154 from Lyle St London, no receipt but that came in a wooden grey box as well.


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