Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2021/06/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]wouldn?t want that one taking a dump on your windshield ric > On Jun 18, 2021, at 12:34 PM, Brian Reid <reid at mejac.carlsbad.ca.us> > wrote: > >> Very good shot of a "Barksdale Bird". They are all much older than >> the crews that fly them. > > My very first job after finishing graduate school was helping devise a way > to manufacture retro electronic replacement parts for B-52s. B-52s were > built using components that were state of the art at the time, but haven't > been manufactured in many decades. The SAC had a large stash of > replacement electronic parts in salt caves in Utah, but those were > projected to be depleted by 2000 or so. There were studies about > re-engineering the avionics, but they concluded that would be require too > much testing, so launched a program to recover the ability to manufacture > old parts. My personal involvement was in the remanufacture of a chip > first sold in 1969 but available to Boeing for B-52 upgrades in 1968, the > Intel 1101 SRAM. > > We sort of succeeded, but before long the machines involved in the > manufacturing process were themselves obsolete and unmaintainable, and the > Air Force decided to do it some other way. I was reminded of a science > fiction story from my youth in which there was a battle between an army > with jet airplanes and an army with pikes and poison darts. > > Then I was no longer able to buy mercury batteries for my Rollei 35; the > problem had hit close to home. > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information