RAY-JEFFERSON
MODEL 410 MARINE RADIOTELEPHONE
This radio has extraordinary wiring. The bus wires are curved and bent
beautifully. Look at the arcs of bus wire to the crystal selector,
above the middle plate. The cloth covered wires are all routed
gracefully, and tied in neat bundles when in multiples.
The most tellling thing about the quality
of this unit is the motor/generator unit for the transmit current. It
is to the right of the photo above. One end/commutator is the motor
power, and the other commutator is for the secondary transmit current.
Usually this task is taken up by a small plug-in vibrator. I'm not sure
if this unit was done because it is an earlier radio, and this is the
ONLY way it was done... or if this unit was substituted for a vibrator
as it was considered a better way to go on better radios.
The transformers have their own covers, marked "special production".
One clue (I think) that this may have been on a powerboat rather than a
sailing yacht is the add-on antenna trimmer, seen above the
motor/generator. Sailing boats could have antennas of any length
necessary, but power boats would have limited options. But maybe I am
wrong, and the trimmer just helped adjust for any antenna after
installation.
I cannot place the year of this radio. I tend to think mid to late
1930's, due to the octal tubes, which include a "coffin shaped" 6V6.
But it could be up to the post war years, maybe as late as 1950.
Using the battery from my garden tractor, I fired the radio up. When I
heard the motor/gen unit fire to life, I shut it down and carefully
lubricated the heavy ball bearings at each end. The old grease was
clean, but hard. So I then hooked up the antenna to my longwire, and
grounded the chassis. The motor winds up with a smooth, purposeful
growl. The "dial light" came on, and static hissed from the speaker.
Switching to the second frequency of 2382 KC, I picked up some SSB. Of
course it was garbled, as the radio has no BFO. When switched to the
handset position, first the speaker cuts out. You have to key the
mic... a relay trips, and the handset earpiece takes over. The same
happens the other way... you have to first switch to speaker, then key
the mike, before the cabinet speaker comes on line.
I put some batteries in my portable Ray Jefferson RDF, which has the
old marine band on it. With the help from my daughter, we discovered
this old radio works flawlessly, at least the length of our house.
There is a certain magic to having it come to life... it is maybe 60
years old, and works like the day it was put up on a shelf in some
garage or marina. It would be like finding a 1940 Cadillac in a garage
after all these years... then turning the key and having it start.
Click for larger image.
On examining the assembly of the wooden face, the screws holding it,
and the extensions needed to have the knob shafts reach the knobs... I
concluded that the wood was a later addition to the radio. Perhaps a
boatyard had thier interior joiner/carpenter make a face to match the
boat, or maybe the factory modified the radio for a client. Until I see
an ad for the original radio, as offered to the public in factory trim,
I won't know. But to get an idea of what it would look like, I
photographed it, and made a 3D CAD model of it with a sheetmetal face.
Looks possible to me. If metal is original, perhaps I will make one for
it.
Click on the image for a larger image.
I
found an original ad
for the radio in a 1947 Yachting magazine. This is a close up of about
a third of the ad. It has not completely cleared up the mystery of my
verison.
From it, I see the 410 was offered two ways... "Polished Mahogany" and
"Steel". So I was on the right track. There was a factory mahogany
version. But it looks different than the mahogany I have, in that my
front extends
past the side edges. Also, the corner of the main case looks rounded in
the ad... as though it might be wood, also. My cabinet is steel.
I was going to stick with the idea that my radio was originally a steel
cabinet model, like the bottom radio in the ad. But then I noticed that
the wood model has screws on the front, the steel does not. I had a
eureka moment... I'll bet mine is simply the mahogany model, but it's
cabinet lost an outer covering of mahogany at some point in it's life.
If mine were covered with a 3/4" layer of wood, it would fill out to
the dimensions of the front, and look exactly as the top image in the
ad. What are the odds of finding a radio, wondering if the wood was
added, and then finding an ad with a wood and a steel version?
And the steel version looks like the mock up I made. Bizarre.
