The Orion 115A originates from 1950 (Hungary). It has no tuning capacitor, but can be switched to 3 fixed frequencies.
During some years after WW II only two MW stations were available in Hungary: Budapest 1 (Kossuth) and Budapest 2 (Petöfi). On places where reception was weak, use could be made of a relay station. This explains the 3 positions on the frequency switch.
The receiver is housed in a simple wooden cabinet.
Tubes employed: UCH21, UBL21, UF21, UY1N.
Model 115A has a "brother", model 115B, employing battery tubes.

Orion115-front    Orion115-back

I bought the Orion 115A in an antique shop in Keszthely, a town west of the Balaton lake in Hungary.
A visual inspection did not reveal damage to electronic components and after having carefully charged the smoothing electrolytic capacitors, 220 Volt was supplied (in steps). Thereafter local stations could be heard on all three positions of the frequency switch.
As can be seen from the picture of the front, the radio needed quite some restoration. Apart from a damaged grille cloth and cabinet, the interior demanded further attention.
By the way, the original knobs were missing. I replaced them initially by knobs from my junk box.
In front of the grille cloth a horizontal wooden bar was missing too.

In the meantime this Orion has been restored. Although the radio played pretty well, I decided to dismantle it until the last screw and piece of wire. This seemed to me the only way to clean the chassis and components.

This picture shows all components after dismantling, except for the tubes. In order not to damage the six delicate RF and oscillator coils they were put in protective plastic bags.

All pieces of wire were tagged with a label, so enabling me to put them back on their original place.

 Apart from the cleaning operation, I replaced the smoothing (electrolytic) capacitor, as it turned out to be rather leaky. The antenna series paper capacitor showed a short-circuit. For security's sake also all other paper capacitors were replaced. This was accomplished by emptying the respective housings, placing new high quality components in the original housings and sealing them again with a dark grey, kneadable two-component epoxy. This material hardened after 5 to 10 minutes after mixing the two components by kneading.

After remounting all cleaned parts on the cleaned chassis and supplying 220 Volts, the speaker confirmed that there was life in the equipment again. I first checked and corrected the aligment of the IF by supplying a modulated 473 kHz signal to grid g1 of the mixer UCH21. Then the main oscillator coil (middle position of channel switch) was set at a strong local (Belgian) station on the lowest side of the band. In the left and right position of the channel switch other coils are switched parallel to the main coil, so lowering the inductance of the combination and resulting in a higher resonance frequency. I set these coils to the frequency of two other strong local (Dutch) stations. Finally the RF coils were peaked.

chassis old          chassis new
               Chassis before restoration              Chassis after cleaning and restoration

The cabinet was soaked in hot water for a short while. Thereafter the glue weakened and the front and side panels could be taken apart. The dried parts were cleaned and glued together with a polyurethane wood glue. The cabinet was painted with a transparant middle oak acrylic coating and finished with a protective transparant coating.
The backpanel was cracked and folded. By placing it a for a few weeks under a heavy load press it got its original structure again, more or less. Final step was refurbishing of the imprinted gold coloured text, symbols and drawing on the backpanel.

cabinet        cabinet-finished      back panel

    Remounted cabinet                                       Finished radio                              Refurbished back panel

A kind Hungarian collector, living in Austria, was so kind as to provide me with the missing wooden bar, a replacing grille cloth and the missing knobs.


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Last update:  December 21, 2005