[CQ-Contest] Contest-Pedition FRAGILE Luggage Labels

[Tom Rauch]

> 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