Fada 220 Mk2 (1941)

The letters F-A-D-A are the initials of Frank Angelo D'Andrea, who founded the company in the 1920s. FADA produced many radios and televisions over the years, but its Catalin radios—particularly the Bullet—are the best-known models.  The 1888 Italian born Frank lived in New York when he made his early radios, but the company was sold in 1934. This Bakelite radio model  I found was living in Portugal and nobody wanted it because all 6 valves, the back, speaker and front knobs were missing. But you guessed it I brought it, for just £6  and £20  post. I think I was drawn to the tuning dial, the seller just sold it as 'a fairy' brand, which was the name of one of Fada Catalin models. 

National AT-290 donor radio from 1959

After spending many hours trying to locate a circuit diagram that matched the chassis I gave up. I think the cabinet was from a different model to the chassis inside and many components had been removed in a bit to restore it in the past, so I decided to install another chassis yet again and this time though to save cost I put a National transistor from 1959 that had a badly damaged cabinet so was no great loss. 

Old car speaker used to replace original

The original loudspeaker was missing it's cone so I fitted a similar size Philips car speaker in it's place using Aroldite to attach to the baffle ( baffle to narrow for crews) That too a couple of attempts due to the chassis hitting it when re-inserted. Next job was to remove all the no essential parts from the main chassis leaving the tuning capacitor. 

Chassis fixed in place by L shaped bracket

The Nation radio was MW & SW the same as what the dial displays so I just removed the 2 x 330 pf tuner wire (Oscillator and RF connection, and earth). I fitted the National via an 'L' bracket I made using the old tuner hole fixings. 

Old chassis after drilling out valve bases and IF cans etc.,

The band switch was far too integrated with the National to be easily removed so I gave access to it from the rear of the set. Band switch on Fada was converted into a Local/Distant switch. The volume control was replaced with  an on/off 47 K ohm pot I found in a used box along was 3 Bakelite knobs I brought from a large collection recently. 

Dial with 3 LED's at top

The original 6.3 volt bulb was removed and 3 x LED's in series with a 1.5k resistor and across the 9 volt rail via the on/off switch negative feed. The missing back was traced out on a sheet of plastic and cut slightly smaller to fit inside as the back bolt holes were not recessed, all looked OK, I fixed an old SW aerial rod to the back and she was a runner again.