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Boy JR, you hit on a good one here. Yup. I have to admit I went with
the overhead meter lamps as a last resort. That's not to say I didn't
try to replace them internally at first, because I tried. Here's the
deal as you know it's a most sensitive area working in and around the
meter and if you drop / bend the needle / or have difficulty putting it
all back together you could wind up with a ruined meter. So I opted to
take the easy way out, I took several miniature 12v lamps and a small dab
of hot glue on each one and mounted them above the meter. Better that
then taking a chance on loosing the meter.
As far as painting goes, that's another story. Knowing most people who
have nice gear are
reluctant to paint, but hey ~ some of these rigs are nearing 34 years old
and the later ones nearly
24 years old in the case of an FT-101F. If you're lucky you can find an
"E/EE/EX/F/FE/FX" in
really ~ really nice condition. Most of mine are like that, but I had to
pick and choose through a lot of dogs before I found them. Many are
getting pitted chassis and in the case of my restoration it should have
been tossed aside and used for parts. OH get a load of this. I asked
the seller to remove the little spinner on the main knob and tape them to
the radio so they wouldn't get lost in transit. Well needless to say he
lost both of them and claimed they were in the box. So when I asked him
where the spinner for the main tuning knobs went and why he didn't tape
them to the rig like I asked him. He said to me
"HE DIDN'T WANT TO RUIN THE PAINT JOB on the rig" Good grief !! They
were a rusted mess and he didn't want to ruin the paint job !! Wow.
~Ok~ got a little side tracked here. So here's the deal on case paint.
Like you said you need to experiment around a bit but I'LL try and make
it easy for you in a second. Being very fussy I wanted my rig to be as
close to original as possible. But this in part is what I learned. They
made the FT-101 for the better part of 12 years. When was the last time
you heard of a rig being made that long, not by today's standards. You
can take the case off several of these rigs and set the side by side and
there will be slight color variations among the cases. The very early
(Original) FT-101 had a light gray tone with the paint having a slightly
marble effect. This was apparently abandoned with the "B" models and
later for a more flat gray. However there were still different shades
between the "B" and later "E" models.
This is just from my experience, maybe my eyes aren't what the use to be
but I'd be curious to know if anyone else has noted this. If Yaesu
couldn't keep the paint mixture EXACTLY alike for 12 years, so you can't
expect to do so either.
So here is what I settled on for the case. Home Depot has a spray enamel
called
"Winter Gray" and it really looks beautiful. After you do your cabinet
with it, you'll swear
it's new out of the factory. It's like I said, I'm sure we can get
several opinions on the paint, color
and techniques used to put it on. But even Yaesu had color shad
variances over the years. So it's
like I told a friend a few days ago, you have to do the best that you can
do with what
you have. It would be nice if we all owned professional spray booths at
home, but most of us
don't. So I settled for second best, a spray can !
That's all I have for now. Need to find a cup of coffee.
73's
Carol Maher
W4CLM
On Sat, 29 May 2004 03:09:49 -0500 "Joseph Richard"
<jrichard333@hotmail.com> writes:
Howdy,
I enjoyed looking at your pictures. I have a number of FR-101s, never
did bother to pick up a FL-101. I will definitely experiment with your
technique for matching paint on the front cover. I am curious as to
whether or not you used overhead lamps for the meters are replaced the
original bulbs which were internal?
Have fun.
JR
Certified Electronics
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FoxTango/
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