He's Off-The Race is on

In communiqué

Oh, one of those halogen jobs with a standard bayonet type cap? I used
to put them in the Saturno - but approaching twice the wattage. Still an
exercise in imagination at night.

They can be inclined to not tolerate vibration as well as standard bulbs
IME. Though the Saturno not having the standard headlamp mounts may have
been a factor.

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Have you seen what happens to any piece of kit that is not wrapped up
in solid metal ?. However hard you try to make a radio squaddieproof the
best you can hope for is that maybe half will survive the first year
in the field. When you add in all of the extra secure encryption
technology you end up with at least twice as many parts to go wrong so
in the end its a miracle that anything survives.

We once supplied the SADF with some commercial ruggedised HTs that were
a great success with the diamond mines. Around 75% came back wrecked
within 6 months.

And dont get me started about expecting nicad batteries to last forever.

 

True, but given the amount of kits squaddies lug around when on
exercise or otherwise, any weight saving is a bonus. The encryption is
a non-issue. Even hardware encryption methods take up no space today.

I'd expect that to be the case with any radio units, even ruggedised,
squaddie proof ones (albeit a bit less).

Today, there are _no_ batteries that last forever.

 

Agreed, but the British Army has been known for years to be one of the
best in the world, but with the shitest kit. 'bout bloody time the MOD
took note of this fact.

I reckon squaddies would be happier with lighter, less ruggedised kit
than the shite they're fobbed off with today.

 

Err, not a Bosch cap is it? Only my Guzzi used those (35-35 Watt) and
the halogens I tried to replace them with a) had the main & dip
filaments reversed and b) the filaments were a few mm closer into the
bulb, so the beam spread was... interesting.

 

The one in my Duke managed ten years.....

 

"Igor's 35/25w eyes gleamed brown..."

 

Nah. Some bizarre thing with three slots in the surround.

 

****.

 

That's not forever. Still very good mind.

 

Hah! I was thinking of exactly that as I typed my post.

 

A properly-designed radio would be too small to sit on, and solid-state kit
can be rugged as ****. Consider the functionality built into the average
mobile phone: if you made a battlefield comms unit the size of (say) a
Blackberry 8820, every man in the patrol could have one. If one broke,
there's plenty of spares.

And cost? How is it that cost is irrelevant for radios, but a big stumbling
block for body armour and Snatch Landrovers?

 

You didn't realise how old it was? Mind you, it's probably worth a few bob
as an antique.

 

I have two and a half garages full

 

I joined REME straight out of school as an apprentice VM.

 

Thunderace headlights are rated at 35W each on low beam as standard.

 

One of my SpazzBikes is a 1981 model, the other is a 1982.

 

My old man was REME from '62 and his old man from when it was formed,
in WWII. He moved over after finishing his stint in the LRDG in Africa.

 

*wooosh*

 

Mobile phone manufacturers /are/ producing millions of the things, and
bringing out newer, better versions every five minutes. All the military
needs to do is co-opt the technology.

Sounds like a tiny change to add decryption to a consumer GPS. Anyway, the
troops all using consumer GPS proves my point: they're piggybacking off the
civil market. Instead of a per-unit price tag in six figures, they're
paying the price of a decent lunch.