[Amps] A Crying Shame

[ka1xo at juno.com]

Yes, that's right. Shame. Shame on us. We Americans have come up with so many fine ideas and products, such as televisions, FM commercial radio and unionism, only to have them taken from us because it's not economically feasible to manufacture, and the cost of labor is too prohibitive, it seems, for anyone to do anything.

Within one month another one-of-a-kind amplifier has been trashed in shipping. This time it was UPS. What makes it unforgiveable is that the shipper and receiver both contacted UPS on advice as to how to ensure safety.  We were told to go to an official UPS Store, Inc., and let them box everything up.

The shipper photographed the heck out of the unit before it went. A-1 condition throughout.  The shipper photographed the packing process: Bubble wrap, cardboard box, peanuts after that, and another cardboard box. The finished product had six inches of dense packing around all six sides, and the box was stapled then taped on all edges. Twelve "Fragile" stickers. Arrows. Big letters: "Do Not Drop: Glass."

UPS bounced the transformer crate so bad it bent the mounting irons so the tranny looks like the leaning tower of Pisa.

UPS bounced the amp chassis box so bad it ripped the blower motor start cap right out of its can on the rear RF deck wall, and dislodged the 500pF ceramic vacuum variable from its clamped mountings. 

Worst, the bounce was on the rear lower right corner. How do I know? The extruded aluminum lower right rail has a nice bend where it took the fall.

It seems now that it would have been worth it to take 3 days off the busiest cell project on the face of the earth, where 40 or 50 contractors are charging $2K a night, per site, each, and just thumb my nose and drive off to Georgia. But no. My manager asked me to stay on duty these nights because we're starting to install the first of nine thousand, 180Watt power amplifiers and there's no other English-speaking RF engineer who can supervise construction at night.

So Terry Jones and I mull it over and over. He knows what happened to my beautiful one-week-old EMTRON DX-3. Rudi calls me from Australia just to yell at me every now and then: "You should have never shipped it anywhere!" Isn't he right?

It cost hundreds of dollars to send it UPS 2-day from GA to NJ, including the expert packing. 

I wonder how many times the bozos in UPS tried dropping it to hear the tinkle inside?

Sonsabitches!

Well. That feels better.

Hope you all have a real nice day.

Fraternally,

Hal
KA1XO