Silence is Golden - Part 2

So the mods on the ID-5100 radio's worked so well that I had to move on and work on some of the other kit in the shack. Next in the sights - the Icom 9100!!. This radio has a thin fan buried in a most awkward place inside the casings, the problem here is that there is no cold air intake for this fan, so if you leave the set on for long enough - it will heat soak the chassis, the fan will not cool the set because it just moves the warm air round and round the inside of the set. Not ideal.

So what can we do? The problem is the lack of cold air intake, so I managed to dodge up a fan shroud using a "Robinson's" squash bottle, perfect fit incidentally, so that makes it impossible for the fan to push anything but cool air from outside the radio around the aluminium chassis.

Net result, the fan isn't any quieter, but it now runs less often due to the cold air intake. I can honestly say I dont understand why Icom built the cooling system this way.