National Panasonic RF-1150 (Radio) 2 into 1

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Terry

Member (SA)
Not strictly Boombox, but I'm sure many of you guys can relate.

1973 was the year I turned 9, my father, who worked in the Iron ore mines of remote Pilbara, Western Australia, took the family on an European vacation. A battery operated shortwave radio was purchased and in march 1974, a few months before my 10th Birthday, we departed. The radio is a National RF-1150, known variously as a Cougar 115, or a GX 600, in the US of A CB radio was just taking off, and their version came with a CB radio band.

The radio on the left of the picture sat on my lap for 9 months as we motored through most of Europe in our orange Hillman Hunter! The radio on the right was purchsed recently on ebay as a donor box for an antenna and band selector knob. Today was the day to build one box out of two.

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The donor radio works well, but has a few issues, the tuning rod sits high, and is not the correct shape, the radio has also been dropped hard at one point, with an awful repair attempted with an old matchbox, and epoxy resin. The battery area is broken completely, as soon as I removed the back small pieces of body fell out.

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Disassemble, clean & repair, replace antenna! (One screw for antenna replacement).

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Ready to assemble, at this point I wasn't sure which front facia I was going to use, they are both pretty much the same.

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Radio one assembled, tested and working perfectly! New antenna and band selector.

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Radio two assembled.

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Both radios together, both radios work fine.

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All in all a very satisfying way to spend a few hours, the doner box will actually be a good radio, I need an antenna, band selector knob, and a complete back panel to make it perfect, any one with any parts?

This was the first time I'd attemped anything like this, and only did so after reading this page.

http://www.noobowsystems.org/restoratio ... 150-e.html

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed doing this!
 

Fatdog

Well-Known Member
Staff member
That's nice, Terry. I have an RF-2600 that I picked up at a thrift store. I was really surprised at its good sound. The only thing I need is an antenna for mine.
 

radiodayz

Member (SA)
Nice work, Terry :thumbsup: , my collection so far skips that decade, but I've heard a lot of good things about 70s Panasonics, that model in particular.
 

Terry

Member (SA)
Fatdog, the RF-2600 is the big brother of the RF-1150 and an all round much better radio, the 1150 looks better though.
Is yours a "Cougar"?

radiodayz, the RF-1150 looks and sounds great, but as a SW listening radio it has some serious shortcomings. Mine stay on FM, where it performs better than any other comparable radio. Lets hope they delay switching off analogue here for many years. DAB+ is really starting to take off here.
 

Fatdog

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Terry said:
...the 1150 looks better though.
As we are so apt to say here in the South, "Thems is fightin' words!" :lol:

You got the silver, but mine has the cool, hand crank tuner and a digital display! :-P

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Terry

Member (SA)
Fatdog said:
Terry said:
...the 1150 looks better though.
As we are so apt to say here in the South, "Thems is fightin' words!" :lol:

You got the silver, but mine has the cool, hand crank tuner and a digital display! :-P
image

Ok, I'll concede the cool, but you might wanna check your map, I'm a little bit further south than you.

:surf: :surf: :surf: :surf: :surf:
 
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