On 11/20/2010 05:27 PM, Bruce wrote:
On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 14:44:43 -0800, Tim
wrote:

On 11/19/2010 03:29 PM, Wes wrote:
Jim wrote:

When I was a kid, the telephone company installed
a new dial switching center and junked the manual
system. Every relay, tube, patch panel and power
supply was smashed before it was auctioned off to
the scrapmonger.

And our government takes perfectly good ammo that passed a certain age and sells it to
companies that destroy it by separating it bullet, powerer, case, they also have to kill
the primer.

Then I buy it from that company that bought it and put it back together with a new primer
after swaging the primer pocket since military ammo tends to have crimped in pockets.

Our administration tried to totally destroy it recently but Congress put a stop to that.

If they want some ammo unloaded, send it to me, I'll give my word to fire it by a certain
date for free. Currently .30-06 and .45 acp would be welcome. If they need some 5.56
stuff shot, I'll buy an AR a bit sooner than I'm planning.

What do you want to bet that at some time in the past some enterprising
businessman got the bright idea of buying surplus ammo and selling it
back to the government as new?

I may be 100% civilian, but one of the points that I've learned from
histories is that it's hard to win a war with munitions that don't work
when you need them.


You may be joking but it does happen. I remember being a surplus
electronic place in L.A. and hearing the owner tell another chap how
he had bought a load of a some sort of electronic component from a
military salvage yard and later responding to a bid off to supply for
exactly the same item. Said he made 100% profit :-)

I'm not joking at all. There's something about military purchases
(perhaps the essential stupidity of large groups) that makes such
behavior thrive. It's not so bad with electronic components, unless
they're old and corroded -- but anything that has a "sell-by" date would
be a problem.

I know that the British had a problem with artillery rounds during WW-I
(which I believe they solved), and Stephan Ambrose talks about how
German artillery rounds were often duds during the allied invasion of
Europe (and since I have the second edition, includes a letter from a
former Jewish slave laborer, who was one of many that would
intentionally sabotage munitions -- I don't know that I could ever
muster the courage to go to work every day, and quietly engage in
behavior that would have my employers making me wish I were dead long
before they killed me).

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html