> Second - I can remember watching a baggage handler pushing
> a large (as in just fit through the baggage door of the
> plane) cardboard box, on a pallet, labeled FRAGILE, GLASS,
> THIS SIDE UP, through the door, right out to drop the 4 ft
> or so to the tarmac - no conveyor belt etc. For some
> reason, I seem to think the MORE you label your gear, the
> worse it gets treated!
One thing you have to remember is a big hard case doesn't
protect the rig from anything but punctures or point
impacts. All of the real protection is in the padding. I've
seen several radios and dozens of amplifiers ruined by poor
packing, and the poor packing almost always centers around
the padding.
Consider what happens if we drop a box one foot on a hard
surface. That's twelve inches of acceleration at one G. If
we stopped it in one foot with a mirror of the acceleration,
the deceleration would be one G. That's the best we can
hope for. At that point everything in the radio weights
twice as much, and you better hope you don't have 2X the
weight of the radio on the tuning knob and nothing else.
Now think about the padding in your case. If the padding was
two inches thick the G force from a one foot drop would at
the very best (which it never is) be six G's. Now your 50
pound Yaesu can put over 350 pounds on one point if the one
point had a yield that would just bottom out at that amount
of pressure.
Would the tuning knob handle that? A large flat area of a
chassis or case might handle that weight, but not a plastic
front window or knob.
So the real problem in all of this is people buy the wrong
case with the wrong padding. They often put the gear inside
the case in a way that places most of the impact risk on a
knob or other fragile component. Then they wonder why things
get broken.
A typical pelican case with the very low density foam inside
is probably good for protecting something light like a
vacuum tube provided there is several inches of foam around
the tube. It's next to nothing for a radio or amp unless the
foam has very high density and the shortest travel distance
from any protrusion on the gear inside to the case is at
least three inches.
It's really about how smart we are with packing.
73 Tom
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|