[Milsurplus] Re: Russian B-29 HF Radios

[Kargokult@aol.com]

arc5@ix.netcom.com writes:

<<  
 Kargokult@aol.com wrote:
 > Even with their best & brightest efforts to keep
 > up by continuously stealing new technology, one could see that
 > gradually they had to fall more behind...
 
 In fairness to the Russians- We worked with some of them 
 on the Joint Testing project in Nevada.  They are very, very
 sharp people.  They are also very practical people.  I think the
 copying of Western technology was more a matter of expedience then
 a lack of imagination.  Their problems with some forms of technology
 was due to their untenable political system- not a lack of intellect.
 73 Dave S.

Hue Miller replies:
I did not mean individual smartness, rather the pool of smartness their
parallel universe drew from. As far as smartness, the individual Russian
was possibly better educated in theoretical science, and their science
in theoretical physics was as advanced, or more advanced even, than
ours.
However - for example - look at a Russian transistor radio from the
Soviet era. Where transistor radios in the western sphere had parts
from all over the world, the Soviet radios had parts only from  several
certain factories. This one  political block manufactured its own 
ferrites, tuning caps, lytics, transistors, speakers, batteries - they
couldn't just shop for the best, best priced, most advanced. 
Also, they had a good part of the society involved in non-productive
pursuits. This was full employment, so people could rest easy at nite,
knowing as long as they kept their noses clean, they couldn't be fired
from their job, spying and reporting on other citizens, or as a transmitter
technician at a station that jammed western broadcasts, for example.
As for vacuum tube avionics, how do you like vacuum tube radars,
vacuum tube signal processing and computation? In the 6-Day War,
Syria lost 80  Russian-built jets to Israel's 0. 
Theirs was a system that had an illogical basis - which is a tilt toward
ignorance. Unfortunately, such political blocs still exist.
which 
Regards, Hue