National/Panasonic CT-101 Kutztown
 

I found this set at Kutztown in the overflow pavillion for $80. It is a National early variant of the Panasonic CT-101 1.5" called a TR-101CT. It is in a National box (a bit tatty) and sold in Japan and brought here. The seller said it was his sons set. Very clean and no magnifier as it was an option. The manual is Japanese and the date code on the set is Dec, 7, 1983. The VHF and UHF tuner is way off. At my ballpark I did get an RF at way below the UHF 60+ I was checking The video in is perfect with the factory adaptor.

Power up gave a bad pic. No green. I did a CRT swap with a good CRT I had on the shelf from a destroyed Panasonic version. Andy Cuffee helped with scans of the set and scans of the CRT setup. All was well and all was easy. The CRT drops in with a few shims and the yoke and HV connector. I did a Beltron check on the bad CRT with clips on clips in a curious G1 to H connection. All good. Maybe a dirty connection on the old CRT but it did not matter. A good CRT was in and I have a spare.

A look through a worldwideinternetweb search showed one entry for this particular Japanese version and it is not helpful:

http://translate.google.com/translat...AG_enUS459US45

And stay tuned for a few photos of a RCA TM-15 monitor that passed through Kutztown. Pre-sold.

WHY did they cheapen the cabinets so badly on these l'il guys ?!? They were sorta a "Flagship" product, looks like they COULD have spent the extra 10 yen & given it a METAL cabinet that wasn't SO flimsy..

Very nice find, Dave.

Regarding the channels, if I remember it right, Japanese channels 1-3 are roughly where our FM radio band is (88-108 MHz), the next higher group (maybe 4-12 but I am not sure) are in a band similar to our high VHF band (174-216 MHz, but maybe a wider range), and their UHF band just about matches ours except the numbers are off by one channel (so their channel 13 would be the same as our channel 14, 470-476 MHz and so on).