OK, here is the road trip report.
Yesterday I left home at 10.45 AM, to meet Level42 at his house around 12.30 PM.
The weather was looking good, I knew this was going to be another nice roadtrip.
Because there was a traffic jam on my scheduled route, I took a little detour, which brought me through Arnhem.
The usual coffee at a gas station.
I arrived at Level42’s house at 12.45, and soon after that Muerto also got there. In fact he already arrived at 11.15 AM, but because the long drive he had, he took a little nap in his van. We were scheduled to leave for the warehouse at around 13.00 PM, but due to some Berzerk arrangements to be made, we actually left at 14.00 PM
OK, still on route.
We arrived at the warehouse at 15.30 PM, Superully was already there (for just a few minutes). A few minutes later jcp and his friend also got there. So a group picture had to be made (I’m behind the camera).
Who is who? The warehouse owner was also there, he opened the door and we walked inside. Here are a few pics, not too much, Level42 did already show some nice ones a few weeks ago.
But things had changed a bit since Level42’s visit. There has been a German raid in the meanwhile, and they took almost all pinball tables. Which is a shame because I would like to have seen them. In general there were a lot of generic cabs, but also still some very nice dedicated Zaccaria and Atari cabs (quite some (super) break outs, a canyon bomber and some others). Because the pinball tables were gone, the warehouse owner had re-arranged the freed space the last few weeks, and a lot of cabs were now almost or completely not accessible any longer, like the Taito cabs.
Still, I found my target cab, Vanguard, which is a great game, and superully and muerto didn’t leave empty handed also.
Here are the catches of the day (I also got a few nice VGA arcade monitors for some projects which I’m working on).
We left the warehouse at about 17.45 PM. We planned to eat together somewhere at a Burger King or so alongside the highway, but unfortunately I lost sight of the other two cars. I’m sure they had a nice meal together while I drove home, where I arrived at 23.00 PM (had a break for a family visit) and 624 km’s later. It was a long day and a bit tiring (I’m not complaining, superully and muerto had a much longer travel today), and it was worth it.
I unpacked the car this morning, did a bit of a clean on the outside (dirty as hell she was) and here she is:
Of course there is the usual damage on the CPO (I hate cigarettes!), but not too much.
I don’t think that I can do much about the CPO but a good clean. I will probably repaint the front panel and the front of the CPO. The side art still looks very good after all these years; there are a few tiny woodchips, but I will restore that Bruno’s way, with a piece of cloth and matching paint. And I will repaint the base of the cab. The marquee and the glass bezel are in excellent condition. The paper bezel around the monitor has a few cracks, a bit of glue will do.
On the technical side, I did take a short look inside, this cab is DIRTY!!! There is no game PCB in it, so I don’t have the opportunity to test it yet. But the monitor is a very common Hantarex MTC 900, it won’t be a problem to get a cap kit etc. And the joystick needs new parts.
I will not start working on this cab after I have done the Centipede refurbishment, probably somewhere in winter.
