[Milsurplus] Research Help Requested

[Ray Fantini]

What's the link? Somehow those numbers don't sound realistic. But that's just an assumption on my part. Biased on antidotal evidence of looking at decades of experience with things like BC-348 receivers that I have never seen fail or BC-342 receivers that are capacitor failure prone but only after thirty years or the one time endless supply of things like EE-8 field telephones or almost all of the command family of radios that the problems were always Ham modifications or hacking. Systems like the ARC-8 (BC-348/ART-13) or the ARC-3 radios served on in some cases until the seventies so I just have a hard time accepting that more than half of what was produced was non reliable.
But that's just me, going on how all the stuff back in the old days that you got surplus was packed in cardboard, foil and everything else can't wrap my head around it. I do recall reading in the Green Books about how lots of equipment was damaged in shipping due to just common stupidity and a story on how much of the equipment shipped to a port in the Pacific was destroyed because when it was packed for shipment in the states the heavy stuff like generators were packed lowest and the delicate stuff like radios were on top and at the destination the longshoremen unloaded the radios first and then stacked the generators on top but would assume that's a mistake you only make one or two times.

Ray F/KA3EKH

-----Original Message-----
From: milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Kenneth G. Gordon
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2017 1:02 PM
To: Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Research Help Requested

I've been reading that PDF that someone here gave us a link to, the Henney 1956 reliability report. I find it extremely interesting from several viewpoints and can recommend it to any of us here.

Apparently, no one who "mattered" was concerned in the least about reliability of equipment during all of WWII, and it was only AFTER WWII that the reliability became a serious issue.

I was only somewhat surprised to learn that up to 60% of gear received by the military was unusable as received, for any of several reasons, poor packing being a big one.

In one case, a piece of equipment had been tested at the factory to a shock of 25 Gs, but when the stuff was shipped, the makers began receiving many reports of defective gear upon receipt. A factory rep was dispatched to follow the gear from the factory to its destination, and watched as the crate containing the gear was dumped off the truck, 4 feet to a concrete floor. When the crate was opened, and a shock sensor was examined, it was found that the gear suffered a shock of 35 Gs.

Some things I found interesting was that something like 14% of aircraft communications gear was affected, but that up to 84% of radar gear was affected.

Believe me, those of us who are involved in safeguarding the remaining WWII radio gear would do very well to read this entire paper. For one thing, it goes heavily into the components used in our radio gear, and secondly makes some extremely interesting suggestions concerning design.

I intend to read it all, and more than once.

Ken W7EKB