There is an old Aussie pop song from the 70's that has a line in the chorus "...don't you ever let a chance go by...". Being true to that theme, I contacted Dave & after some email discussions, he graciously passed the damaged case front (there was no back) and the original meter & power switch onto me for the cost of postage - thanks mate . Dave re-cycled the remaining bits to produce his beautiful Golden Radio Control Systems Tx.
When the case arrived in the mail, upon actual physical examination (rather than examination of the pictures Dave had posted on the forum) I believe it fair to say that Dave was "polite" when he described the damage. I don't think it was just dropped or maybe sat on, rather it had been walked on or some other horrible mistreatment visited upon it . It has also at some dark stage in it's life, been attacked with needle-nose pliers .Regardless, a strategy eventually surfaced in the grey matter to re-birth the Tx and eventually return it to service.
All the panel beating work has been done to the front half of the case. I reduced the depth of the Tx by about 1cm which had a double benefit:
- 1) it removed the most damaged part of the case front &
- 2) most importantly, it then enabled me to then use the A4 size sheet of aluminium I had to bend up a case back, which I fitted blind rivets to rather than rely on self-tappers into the soft ali.
I have both a Reeduino and Reedy 10 encoder ready to go, but I'm still undecided as to which to use. Seeing as the original is a 12ch and I can utilise the original meter to remain "true to form" I'm leaning towards the Reeduino. But (there's always a but ) the Reedy 10 with OLED display would match the Mule conversion. Regardless of which encoder I settle on, the Controlaire will have both 36MHz and 2.4Ghz RF, switchable just like I did in the Mule.
So far, I'm very pleased with the outcome. More to come...........