You can tell the relative ages of the posters when the question pops up, "What's a Star Roamer"! Knight-Kit, a division of Allied Radio back in the 1950s and 1960s, made a wealth of test equipment and other kits and back then, was probably Heathkit's closest competitor. They also made the R-55A, R-100A, Spanmaster and Ocean Hopper shortwave receivers.
I've put together lots of Knight-Kits over the years .... well, over my Wonder Bread years, anyway, (I know ... What are "Wonder Bread years"?) and I still have every one of them and regularly use my R-100A shortwave receiver, KG-670 RC Tester and KG-620 VTVM.
Anyway, there are a lot of Star Roamers out there working just fine. I'd suggest getting some GOOD tubes to put in there. Check out Antique Radio Supply at
http://www.tubesandmore.com for a good assortment of used, new and NOS vacuum tubes.
There's a forum on the Internet designed solely for Knight-Kits at
http://www.senac.com/boards/1270/ where you can find help getting parts and other stuff.
For those of you that don't know of the resource, the BAMA site is one of the largest available for downloadable information on antique gear. It has the complete manual for the Knight-Kit Star Roamer available as a free download. It's at
**broken link removed**
And, you CAN use a good Tektronix semiconducor curve tracer with an outboard heater supply to test vaccum tubes! But if you don't have a tube tester, the curve tracer isn't likely either, is it?
Good luck with your Star Roamer. It'll be worth restoring. Oh yeah. Marc Ellis spent several articles in
Electronics Now restoring a Star Roamer. If you need the specifics on that, let me know. In better times when my stuff wasn't in storage, I'd have looked those articles up for you and sent you a copy.
Dean