[Boatanchors] FT-243 Crystal repair?

[Robert Nickels]

On 3/19/2013 12:43 AM, WA5CAB at cs.com wrote:
> one or both of the brass contact plates to break at the pigtail
> that goes down into the pin.
I'll bet I'm not alone in sharing the following story triggered by 
Robert's comment.   As a Novice I'd ordered a handful of crystals for 
the 80 and 40 meter bands from JAN Crystals in Florida who I'm sure many 
remember.   They were re-ground FT-243s for odd frequencies (whatever it 
came out at, I suspect) but were cheap and as a Novice in the 
crystal-control era, exact frequency didn't matter much as everyone 
would tune across the whole band anyhow!

Well I couldn't leave well enough alone and had heard of this "pencil 
lead" treatment to move the frequency so of course I had to try it.  
Before long,  too-many trips in and out of the holder had sent at least 
one teensy screw into never-never land, and greasy fingers and excess 
lead caused one crystal to stop oscillating completely.  The last blow 
came when one of the little contact plates came off in my fingers...uh 
oh,  I'll never get the tip of my Weller  gun in there!

Fortunately a ham club member brought in a spare FT-243 holder and 
performed the crystal transfusion, after having cleaned the quartz with 
alcohol and suggesting that maybe working on my code speed to get to 
where I could run a VFO would be a better idea!

73, Bob W9RAN