Learning From A Wingnut

Orders seem to have vanished for our instruments at the moment so it's going to be a very light production month in our area. It's a slow time of year for business, I guess. When there is nothing to do on my line I become restless and bored. Even worse, it makes an eight hour shift seem like an unbearable eternity. I hate that. To stay busy I volunteered to work in the Precision Group's assembly area. It's pretty damn bad If I take such a drastic measure like that just to pass time at work because I never wanted to work over there. It's too fucked up. With the exception of Mister Mo and Wingnut Dan, there's nobody cool on that product line. Knowing what I was getting myself into I approached Wingnut Dan first and asked him if he could train me up building their PC board mods. I didn't want to work with Meth, Super Shopper, or the Screw Murderer because they're all a bunch of retards. Dan was cool with the idea of my helping out so he checked on the amount of work they had to do for the night and sat me down at one of their workbenches. He started me off with some of the easiest board mods they've got and showed me where all the parts were located. After I settled in we got down to brass tacks and Dan did an excellent job showing me the ropes.

Board mods on my product line are a pain in the ass to build. The mechanical and electrical engineering of the design is doomsday sturdy but also bulky and awkwardly heavy. It's a prime example of 1970's vintage electronics. I once heard a story about a guy in the US Navy that was climbing up a radar mast on a destroyer. He had one of our boxes in a special shoulder bag and almost near the top of the mast the 100+ pound unit slipped out of the carrying bag. It fell about 80 feet and slammed into the metal deck of the ship. Luckily no one was killed by the falling instrument. The interesting thing is, when they plugged it in and powered it up thinking it would catch on fire, the unit still worked. It's that burly.

Each PC board mod consists of an aluminum casting and a small motherboard that has to be placed on one end of the aluminum extrusion. The worst part of mounting the motherboard is trying to line up about thirty screw holes while placing a paper thin metal RFI gasket between the motherboard and the extrusion holes. The gasket likes to shift location with the slightest movement and I find I have to tinker with it a bunch before it cooperates. Once you get these parts together and secured, you slide about a half dozen PC boards into the casting and press them firmly into sockets on the motherboard. Each board looks like a tiny metal desk drawer because of the mounting faceplate. In the center of them they have a knob that reminds me of something you'd find on a bedroom dresser drawer or an old metal Army office desk. After they're in place you torque them down with more screws and then cable it all up.

The Precision Group instrument board mods are totally different from our stuff. Their instrument family was unleashed from the R&D labs in the 1980's. Instead of each mod holding up to six PC boards stacked up inside an aluminum box, their mods use a metal frame about an inch wide by let's say, a foot long. This design approach only holds one PC board per frame, or can hold up to three tiny boards. That's it. They are much easier and faster to build though, and they don't weigh hardly anything. After securing a board inside the frame you just put a cover on the top and bottom of it and torque the whole thing down. The contrast between the R&D lab design of the 1970's and the 1980's is remarkably different. What I find to be ironic is, the Precision boxes were supposed to replace the old dogs I work on, but they never met the Phase Noise performance specs of the older generation so customers still buy the vintage boxes. They pay a pretty penny for them, too.

Wingnut Dan and I got to talking about our Spokane experiences while he watched me build my first few PC board modules. He was there on the product transfer at the same time I was, but we never met the whole time we were there. His time spent in Spokane was much more pleasant than mine apparently. Shortly after he arrived in the city, he went to the DMV and told them he lost his California driver's license, which was all bullshit. He explained to them that he recently moved into town (which was the only truthful part of his sob story) and gave them his local address of residence. The Washington DMV issued him a new ID card on the spot and the first place he drove to as he left the DMV was a gun store. He's a gun fiend. Washington's gun laws are much more relaxed than California's and Dan knew it. In the months during his stay he figures he must have spent more than ten grand on everything you can think of. He bought assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, you name it he picked it up. Listening to him talk about all the gun shows and pawn shops he hit I became kind of jealous. There was a bunch of firearms I saw in pawn shops I would have loved to buy, but the thought never occured to me to get a Washington ID and buy shit there all legal. I wish I had thought to do the same thing while I was there. Oh well.

The best part of the story he said, was when we were all heading home to California. Bill and Dave's made the offer to ship our stuff back home for us free of charge. We simply had to bring our belongings into the factory and put it on a pallet, they would take care of the rest. Wingnut Dan bought a large metal trunk with a spot on the front for a big, nasty padlock. He loaded the trunk with all his weapons and secured it. Then he placed it on a pallet and dropped it off in the shipping and receiving department. Bill and Dave's company happily transported machine guns across multiple state lines without ever knowing it. As soon as he arrived home he drove on over to the site, picked up his trunk, and drove off into the sunset armed to the teeth. I have to give credit to Dan for that one. Damn clever.