Path: ...!news.nobody.at!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com>
Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y,sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: OT: EV Charging Stations Stripped of Copper Cables
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2024 16:58:54 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 63
Message-ID: <v6ehge$dk04$1@dont-email.me>
References: <v64kvk$2cc3j$2@dont-email.me> <v655vt$2jju3$1@dont-email.me>
	<v65g26$2l5br$4@dont-email.me> <v65m9e$2mc0i$1@dont-email.me>
	<v65ri0$2najh$2@dont-email.me> <v65vqn$2nm1f$3@dont-email.me>
	<5b7b2a9e20charles@candehope.me.uk>
	<p24l8jpi4qiedhp15q1a9s0vqk8ic9a20b@4ax.com> <v6e5ar$bi73$1@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Sun, 07 Jul 2024 18:58:55 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="351c8413554ecb25e73bd9b8e6ce5aba";
	logging-data="446468"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/MKQUG1s31skfSRUOFc/JdELIX4NVT34Q="
User-Agent: Pan/0.149 (Bellevue; 4c157ba)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:RZAZu8d7WjERb37fxzTVaKrVPj0=
Bytes: 4359

On Sun, 7 Jul 2024 14:31:07 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 07/07/2024 14:06, john larkin wrote:
>> We agree that scientists present us with wonderful problems to
>> instrument but are generally terrible at designing electronics
>> themselves.
> 
> This supposed dichotomy between academic and pragmatic knowledge is
> false.
> Both are necessary Example 1.
> =======
> We were developing a laser rangefinder for the Army, featuring fragile
> optics a ruby laser and a bloody expensive silicon photodiode.
> Try as we might we couldnt get  more than just over a mile range from
> the lab roof to a white painted building about a mile away.
> One day a boffin with a tweed jacket and pipe came visiting, we
> explained our problem.
> "How much power is the laser?"
> "EWhat is te noise figure on the photodiode"?
> "I'll see whats what over lunch"
> 
> 
> He came back later and sid - "Oh, well its not good news I am afraid,
> with that much power and that much front end noise you will  be lucky to
> get a mile put of that with a nice reflective target"
> So we gave up, drained all the money out that projects budget and
> cancelled it.
> 
> Example 2 ======
> 
> I was tasked with designing amongst other things a FM Hifi receiver. To
> save time we imported a Japanese tuner head and I built the  IF strip
> and detector.
> The customer was however German, and totally chauvinistic. No Japanese
> quality. We must have German  or at least European, So we got a Philips
> head.
> At once we had massive hiss and hum.  I didn't have time to track it
> diown so a consultant was briught on who spent a fortnight calculating
> the noise contribution of my IF strop and said 'well it doesn't seem to
> be that'
> 'I could have saved to two weeks of calculation'
> 'How so'
> 'Just pull the tuner out, put in a 10.7MHz signal into theh IF strip and
> look! No fucking noise'
> 
> (It turned out that wunderbar German tuner head was a pile of crap.
> They had used a zener diode to stabilize the  VCO without seeming to
> understand that a zener is an ideal noise source, and they had used
> ferrite slugs in the VCO which make marvellous detectors of magnetic
> fields. Germans are shit engineers. They make up for it by testing and
> fiddling till stuff works. A nation of technicians)

On a visit to the UK some years ago I went to the Science Museum in 
Kensington (or wherever it is). They had a Spitfire and a Messerschmit on 
one of the floors and each had cut-away engines. The Spitfire engine was 
of course a Rolls-Royce Merlin and the quality of the engineering was 
staggering. You didn't have to be an engineer to appreciate it. 
Beautifully polished components shining like mirrors. How the hell they 
produced workmanship like that in the middle of a major war is beyond me. 
It was superhuman. The German plane's engine was a pile of garbage in 
comparison; very crudely thrown together with poorly machined parts. 
Still, it did fair job I suppose, even though it couldn't match the 
performance of the Spitfire in the air.