...I shambled in the middle of the night...I observed...I-- I was part of the victorious effort: we found the glitch we were looking for.
Hooray!
Okay, my sleep debt at this point is immense and I'm having to just deal with it, if I want to be back to semi-normal by tomorrow. Probably worth it, since the problem we found was in a place no one on the team would have thought to look if we hadn't A) imitated it in a controlled manner and B) used a video camera to record exactly what happened and then played it back several times until realization dawned.
I'm not well-placed to muse, "Ain't Science wonderful!" but technology certainly is, at least when intelligently applied. Cheapoid UPSs supplied by an outside contractor, not so much.
Lucky you. Spent 8 days living in the office at my Shore Duty Command because ONE 30 uF Cap's Solder Joint in a Power Supply would loosen when the gear warmed up from a Cold Start, thus killing the Satellite Reception. Only found it because another Lab needed a Power Supply, and Base Supply was out. Swapped it out, sent it down, same problem occurred, brought back to the Test Bench, was able to Replicate the Problem in front of Everybody, then I caught some sleep.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, it was the AN/BRN-3 Receiver System, the Predecessor to the GPS we now have. Look up "NavStar" for the History.
Sleep Well.
My favorite thing to hear from a contractor: "It's not supposed to do that!"
ReplyDeleteReally?
Kinda like when we were setting up shop in Sacramento. We were renting radios from The Big M shop in town and buying air time on one of their 800 Meg trunked systems.
ReplyDeleteStanding in our Dispatch center we could talk using an HT but not with the mobile rig we were supposed to be using.
Finally tracked it down to a power supply that was failing. Watching the PS with a digital voltmeter it seemed to hold voltage, but watching with an analog meter we could clearly see the voltage dip upon keying. Wish I'd had an opportunity to watch it on an o'scope...
The sag was deep enough that the radio's CPU was resetting...by the time it came back up the trunking controller had moved on to the next system request.