In the middle of restoring many old radios and transmitters I have come across some very useful material to help me work out what’s what in these old beauties.
In an ideal world we all try to find those older Hams that used to work with and maintained these old bits of kit, sadly for me, all the local Hams that have this knowledge seem to not want to pass on any help whatsoever, in fact I have found the opposite, they think its wrong for anyone of my age group to even use such equipment let alone take it apart, repair and restore them, out of all the amateurs on the Isle of Man there is only one older amateur around that is actually willing to offer help and advice, for which I am grateful for (Thanks Douglas GD3RFK).
Anyway, in the past I have searched the internet, checked any forums about radio restoration and even shouted ‘help’ where I could to ask for help whenever out of my depth. For me the responses are usually very helpful, only on one particular site did I ever receive major trolling by a few people who seemed to think that because of my lack of knowledge in old radio equipment that I was not allowed to try and fix these old beauties. Since then I have not used that site and thankfully found many other sites that are happy to help.
I have now successfully restored 6 KW Vanguards, 2 KW 202’s, a big Henry Linear Amplifier, and a Hammerlund Receiver, and presently in the early stages of 2 Drake C-Line’s (Cherrished because of who gave them to me), an old KW 2000B and although not as old, a Yaesu FT-101e. Sadly for me we do not come across old radios, and my only hope is to find old stufff cheap enough on eBay, but then you have the wows of delivery costs for stuff that weighs a ton.
Anyway, I will keep posting anything I find here to help you guys out…
Black Beauty Capacitor Colour Code.
These beasties are in great supply in old Hallicrafters radios and absolutely should be replaced when restoring an old rig.
Battery Cable Lead Colour Codes
Standard RMA Colour Code for the wires comprising the cables used for connecting battery-operated receivers to batteries.
All leads are solid color.
EIA (RMA) Colour Codes for Power Transformers, Speakers, IF Transformers and Audio Transformers, etc.
Inductor Colour Codes
