[Premium-Rx] Military gear

[Michael O'Beirne]

Good evening from London.  It's still wet!

Gary's post tonight is spot on.  "Making do" is a way of life.  Some of my 
military
techs were perfectionists but operationally you want the stuff to work NOW
even at 70% rather than next week at 100%.  So you solder a bit, change a 
few
valves, tweak a trimmer or two and that's it.  You can't be carting a 
spectrum analyser across Salisbury Plain in the dark with no lights, whereas 
an AVO multimeter will do many things PDQ.

That was a while ago.  Now they swap sets and later swap a few boards at
base and presumably send the dead boards back to the manufacturer.
Alternatively there's now a small UHF squad radio that's cheap and cheerful 
and
as far as I can see it comes sealed and you bin it (administratively) when
it ceases to work.

With a few sets such as the old C15 (basically a Collins 618
aircraft SSB transceiver in a rugged green cabinet), I am told they were so 
expensive and
complicated that there was no way anyone could fix them in the field.

I heard of one tech, though, whose idea of doing a mod was to strike off the 
mod plate and have a cup of tea.  His successor nearly tore his hair out 
trying to make the things work until he realised it was easier to start from 
scratch and assume nothing.  He was a genuine perfectionist.

As for buying surplus, my policy is I will buy only if in excellent 
condition and with a manual.  Over here manuals for the newer gear from WJ 
and similar are impossible to locate thanks to the post 9/11 legislation.

73s
Michael
G8MOB