What is wrong with this picture?
It is a little bit blurry, but the real problem is that none of the indicator lamps on the phasor or antenna monitor are working. Those little incandescent 387 bulbs burn out frequently. It is difficult to tell, at a glance, whether the phasor is in daytime or nighttime mode. One also cannot tell which tower or mode is selected on the antenna monitor.
It is a small job to replace them, but it does take some time. They currently exist in older transmitters, studio consoles, meter backlighting, and other control indicators. Since I began working in radio, I have replaced hundreds of these little lamps. I would rather spend my time on more interesting projects.
The 387 bulbs cost about a dollar each and last less than a year, in most cases. Fortunately, there is a solution to all this. Enter the based LED replacement lamp. These little guys have the long life of an LED (100,000+ hours) in a package that is a direct replacement for the Incandescent lamp. They run about $5.31 each.
Dialight makes a very handy cross reference:
The entire cross-reference section is three pages long and is a part of their PMI catalog. The full cross reference .pdf can be found here.
Those Dialight LED lamps are available from Mouser, Allied, and Newark Electronics.
Time is money. There are much better things to be doing than going around replacing incandescent indicator bulbs in various pieces of equipment. At the same time, it is important to know what the status of that equipment is at a glance, which is the reason for using any type of indicator in the first place. Using drop-in replacement LED indicating lamps with certainly save time and money in the long run.
