I had a house fire about 12 years ago as a result of Federal Pacific breakers failing. The fire chief said it was due to field mice chewing through the insulation on my wiring. If I had a better breaker box it wouldn't have been as big an issue. My family and I stood outside in the middle of the night and watched the lights inside the house get brighter until the main breaker finally either popped or melted off the wall. The home was a total loss. Our family all stood together outside and watched as the Firemen worked to save what they could. Thankfully none of them were injured either.
If you have a Federal Pacific box have it checked!!!!!!!
73
AB8S

Hi Jeff,
I have approximately the same antenna in use. I've been using it for about four years. Mine is two full wl at 160m up at an average height of 35-40 feet. I feed it with 450 ohm window line into a 4-1 balun and normally tune it with an autotuner in the shack. I wouldn't worry about cuting it to any specific length if you are using a matching device of any kind.  It works very well as an nvis on 160-80. I get some gain from it from 60 on up. I run 60m at about 25 watts to be on the safe side. It has a lower noise level overall than my dipoles or verticals. These loops are very friendly to use. The biggest problem with big loops is keeping them in the air. Use good rope and smooth insulators.
---- Subjectively --Signals are easier to copy as a result of the lower noise level. I hear signals I normally miss with other antennas. I work some qrp and this seems to help. Even more subjectively-- I get very good signal reports. ----I'm very satisfied with the antenna.
73
Gail - AB8S

Let me ask a question to clarify.
 Is the broken part on the rotating or stationary portion of the switch?

In the case of the old Kenwoods there are additional unused contacts on the stationary part that could be carefully removed and re-attached using a very small screw and nut through the rivet hole. I'm not sure if the Drake has the same setup. But it might help.
If that wont work for your situation you could advertise to find someone who is parting out a donor rig.

 

Hi Jack,
What radio is it? Is it a metal contact that is missing or more like a chunk out of the wafer? Ive noticed on the older Kenwoods I've tinkered with that there is usualy an extra unused contact or two on some of the wafers. I've noted that if I would mess one up while cleaning the contacts I could probably move one of the unused contacts over to replace it.
Just an idea.
73
Gail
AB8S

THHN works fine for most uses. I've had a 2 wl 160 meter horiz. loop made of #12 & #14 for the last three years. Before that I had an 80 meter dipole using #12. I only took that down to make room for the horizontal loop. My son in law has been using the dipole for a couple of years now. Both have stood up to high wind, snow and ice with no failure during that time.(I live in a fairly temperate climate here in WV, but, we do have extremes.) I suppose if you were using it to build coax fed monoband antennas the stretch would cause it to go a little lower in frequency over time. I dont think that would cause too much trouble for most folks. If you feed it with ladder or window line and a tuner it wont make much difference anyway. Try it its easy to work with.
Gail
AB8S

You might check at your LOCAL hardware store (don't bother with national chains). A lot of the older one's  still keep an assortment of power tool switches. We can normally match one up from stock about 90% of the time.Those we don't have we can usually order from Servalite or some other vendor.There aren't that many different switches so you should be able to get one.
73
GH

You might try cleaning the relays first. There are only two of them in the FT-101E. I was having similar symptoms with mine and found that the relay on the main board was the problem. That relay handles so many varied functions that it can be the source for a lot of different symptoms. You might try denatured alcohol or some of the De-Oxit products. I finally had to change mine out. Once I did, all of the previous problems disappeared. It's available new, only, direct from Yaesu.