Hey everyone! Update time. No patches today. They decided to just hang out a few cities away for an entire day, so it looks like I won't get them until Monday. Still. A lot to cover in this one!
Here's the current state of the bag:
And now some detail shots and notes!
This is a fun Amateur Radio patch I found. I thought it matched the spirit of the patch that resides in that place on the show, since there aren't quite enough details present for me to be comfortable going with a custom one. I dig it! This is clearly not going to be a perfect screen accurate replica anyways.
The honor pins! Special thanks again goes to
Mike J. for pointing these out to me. Upon a side by side examination, the "Honor Pin" isn't quite right if you're going for screen accurate, but the "Science" one is spot on! I've clearly got the Ghostbusters button too high up, but that's easy enough to move. Also note the black and red wire!
Now of course this pin isn't quite right, but this is such a small detail that I'd rather spend my time and money elsewhere for now. Fun though!
This is the second version of the computer pin. It's close enough for my taste, but clearly the monitor is a little too round on mine, and the screen used one seems more sketched and less like an illustrator graphic, but I'm pretty happy with it! It's certainly much better than anything I could find online.
Now, as I said, this was the second version. My original go came out really ugly and dark. Check it out:
So I touched on the color, tweaked the design a bit, and the new version is much better. Although neither looks quite how the original art does digitally of course.
And finally, the big art project since I last posted. You may have noticed the right pocket in the overall bag image. No, I did not ever find the correct speaker. I kept getting leads that went nowhere. I even asked around some radio communities and got mostly snarky answers about how inaccurate radio use is in the show (so helpful). Ultimately, it's some kind of rare CB Radio external speaker or even a car speaker of some kind judging by the wires hanging off it on the original prop. So, I opted to make one.
Step One: Find a grill. I ended up liking the grill that you can find on the Astatic D104-M6's:
Now, these go for anywhere from $35-70 and I couldn't find any parts of just the grill. So that seemed like too much of an investment. However, I got lucky and found one among 7 CB Radio Mics that were not working / for parts for just $15. So, I had them shipped and wonderfully ironic enough, when I picked it up the grill fell off immediately. Poor thing was in wretched shape. Side note: I now have 6 other CB Radio Mics that I haven't a clue what to do with now. Lol.
Step Two: Find a housing. I knew what I wanted to find was a square box tin. The plan was to use the bottom of the tin and discard the lid. So ultimately I settled on this one:
Now I wasn't fully happy with it. It wasn't as Chrome as I wanted and it was more rounded than I was wanting.
So then I found this guy! But unfortunately the image online was deceiving and the bottom actually has a lip.
Would've been quite good too! Oh well.
Step Three: Epoxy and Assembly. I grabbed some epoxy for metal as well as some leather studs to add some knobs to the side (the original prop seems to have some nubs where I assume a bracket stand or handle would've gone)
And here's the final! I also epoxied a bracket so that it would slip into the pocket and hang there.
And here it is on the pocket:
Couple notes: Definitely not perfect or anywhere close to accurate. I realize that. But in the sign of no progress on a found item, I opted to just get something together that would work. Definitely not shiny enough, too rounded, and also about a good inch too small. The tin was about 2.25" so a proper size should've been about 3". Oh well.
As far as the antenna. I grabbed a super cheap, for parts, Realistic TRC-505 FM Transceiver. Perfect size and very similar antenna for the pocket.
So that's where I'm at everyone! Hopefully the patches finally come in on Monday and I can add those and start work on the batteries.
Fun side note! The Astatic D104-M6's I mentioned earlier are more popular in Black...and you may recognize it from somewhere...
If you just pop the logo off and replace with a Rotex "CEREBRO" label, you've got yourself Dustin's Cerebro Mic!