I bought 2 of these radios in the past 2 weeks on fleabay.
I paid $37.00 for the Aircastle and $15.00 for the Allied
Aircastle 162F1H - Serial Number: 06867
Allied 2682: Serial Number:18113
The differences:
Aircastle: lighter in weight, not as sensitive as the Allied, it has 18 transistors, antenna's are short, more plastic internally.
Allied, Heavier in weight, very sensitive, it has 19 transistors, antenna's are long, more metal internally
The Aircastle is the first production run of this series it was sold by Spiegel of Chicago.
AM/FM are very sensitive all the other bands are not as sensitive but with a 20 foot long wire with alligator clips clipped to the antenna it brings in signals pretty good.
The Allied is a later production run and it shows it is very sensitive on all bands, tho the one I have has a problem with the AM BC section just static but if I short one side of a certain capacitor the AM will work for 5 seconds for 1/2 of the band then like 5 minutes later the other side will go out. I cannot see the side of the capacitor so I can buy a new one to replace the bad one tho. but the other bands are very sensitive and hooked up to the 20 ft long wire I get a lot of stations that some of the newer radios that I used to have could not tune in. Now I can hear military comms but the unit does not have sideband I use both radios together like tonight I was listening to hams and milcomms pretty easily by tuning the Aircastle to the freq and using the fine tune as a BFO works great!
So in all both radios have their good points and bad but I like them both.
I cleaned them up pretty well, I used "Mothers back to black" on the leather (if it is leather, probably pleather) and cleaned the chrome with car wax, shines great.
The Aircastle weights 8 lbs the Allied is 10lbs.
I do not like having vintage radios plugged in so what I did was remove both radios ac transformer, I DE soldered the 3 connection to the board and just unbolted the transformers. I like the radios to run on batteries since it is stable 6Volts. The batteries will probably last long in these radios using alkaline batteries.
I ran one radio all night for a couple of nights and the battery indicator didn't even move. Gotta love "D" cells in a vintage radio...!
One thing I did notice on both radios is that on SW I do get slashover from the radios stations nearby on the internal antenna's, once I connect the 20ft longwire it goes away I would think it would magnify if but it doesn't.
I paid $37.00 for the Aircastle and $15.00 for the Allied
Aircastle 162F1H - Serial Number: 06867
Allied 2682: Serial Number:18113
The differences:
Aircastle: lighter in weight, not as sensitive as the Allied, it has 18 transistors, antenna's are short, more plastic internally.
Allied, Heavier in weight, very sensitive, it has 19 transistors, antenna's are long, more metal internally
The Aircastle is the first production run of this series it was sold by Spiegel of Chicago.
AM/FM are very sensitive all the other bands are not as sensitive but with a 20 foot long wire with alligator clips clipped to the antenna it brings in signals pretty good.
The Allied is a later production run and it shows it is very sensitive on all bands, tho the one I have has a problem with the AM BC section just static but if I short one side of a certain capacitor the AM will work for 5 seconds for 1/2 of the band then like 5 minutes later the other side will go out. I cannot see the side of the capacitor so I can buy a new one to replace the bad one tho. but the other bands are very sensitive and hooked up to the 20 ft long wire I get a lot of stations that some of the newer radios that I used to have could not tune in. Now I can hear military comms but the unit does not have sideband I use both radios together like tonight I was listening to hams and milcomms pretty easily by tuning the Aircastle to the freq and using the fine tune as a BFO works great!
So in all both radios have their good points and bad but I like them both.
I cleaned them up pretty well, I used "Mothers back to black" on the leather (if it is leather, probably pleather) and cleaned the chrome with car wax, shines great.
The Aircastle weights 8 lbs the Allied is 10lbs.
I do not like having vintage radios plugged in so what I did was remove both radios ac transformer, I DE soldered the 3 connection to the board and just unbolted the transformers. I like the radios to run on batteries since it is stable 6Volts. The batteries will probably last long in these radios using alkaline batteries.
I ran one radio all night for a couple of nights and the battery indicator didn't even move. Gotta love "D" cells in a vintage radio...!
One thing I did notice on both radios is that on SW I do get slashover from the radios stations nearby on the internal antenna's, once I connect the 20ft longwire it goes away I would think it would magnify if but it doesn't.
Attachments
Last edited:
