Temp Gun

I finally got to the point where my radio was supposed ot work and and it didn't. I remember from my tube repair days that the 1st thing you do is look for burned out filaments. Sounds like a good thing to do but the tubes are all metal.

"Ah HA" sez I. I have a spiffy grill outside and one of these things:


Fire up the radio and wait 5 minutes and measure the tube temps. It's going to take some practice but on the first try, I found one 6V6 at 300 degrees and the other at 150. I replaced the hot one and now they're 240 and 120.

After playing with the distance between the tube and the gun, I've discovered the measurements are really erratic. Back off a couple inches and the numbers for both 6V6s are about 130.

All of the tubes show temps over 100 and the adjacent chassis is 80ish so I'm going with no broken filaments.

Page: /Temp_gun/Temp_gun.shtml

Last modified: Friday, 24 Apr 2026