[ARC5] Etching Crystals and WHINK Revisited.

[Dennis Monticelli]

Hi Dennis,

Good to hear from you and thank you for the post war write-up.  Allow me to
add to the story.  A 2007 book called "Crystal Clear" (by Thompson and
published by Wiley) goes into what our military called the "aging problem"
in great detail.

According to the book the problem was known (but not understood) when the
war began and companies had different methods of dealing with the aging
effect.  Some were modestly helpful and some made it worse.  As it turned
out only one company (Bliley) had discovered the answer.  The aging problem
reared its ugly head big time in mid 1943 as war ramped for America and
lots of crystals hit the field (with the ill effects being greatly felt in
Europe in particular).  To make a long story short, there were commissions
formed and task forces and the major crystals makers all got involved.  It
took a long time to sort it all out and implement changes.  Bliley's
final-dip-in-acid was the answer and Bliley's arm was twisted by the govt
to release their methodology to all the other crystal makers.  Bliley gave
in and this kept them from having a major performance advantage after the
war when crystal makes had to suddenly ramp down and surplus inventory
flooded the market.

The bottom line is that the new aging requirements were not issued until
Jan 1945 and the use of Biley's method was not widespread until after
that.  This jives with my experience.  The many 1944 surplus FT-243's I
have played with show drift to varying degrees.  Even some of the 1945's
have issues.  Bliley's, especially of latter dates, are the best of course.

Thanks again for chiming in with some background info.

Dennis AE6C

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 11:33 AM, mac <w7qho at aol.com> wrote:

>
> On Nov 4, 2014, at 6:55 AM, Dennis Monticelli wrote:
>
> Regardless of concentration, the blank always moves faster initially.  This
> is because the old surplus rocks were ground to freq and that left the
> surface full of loose or weakly attached quartz.  The etching solution
> attacks this first and removes it fairly quickly.  After that loose stuff
> is gone, it.......
>
>
> Not unless you get a VERY old unit.  This problem was discovered early on
> at the beginning of WW2 and corrected, see:
>
> <http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/history-bottom.asp>  for an interesting
> run-down and history.
>
> I use Ammonium Biflouride too BTW.
>
>
>
> Dennis D.  W7QHO
> Glendale, CA
>