Skylab, engineering deadpan, and the old "knowing where to put the X joke"

I have been looking through
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...9840017669.pdf
which was posted here recently in a different thread. On PDF page 309
there is an example of some of the instructions sent-up via the
teleprinter to the first Skylab crew:

I. PREFLIGHT HISTORY HAS INDICATED PAST RELAY HANG-UPS WHICH HAVE BEEN
FREED BY MECHANICALLY SHOCKING THE RELAY.
2. RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE IS TO STRIKE THE CBRM HOUSING AT THE POINT
INDICATED BELOW. TESTS INDICATE THAT YOU CANNOT HIT THE CBRM HARD
ENOUGH TO DAMAGE IT.
3. DIAGRAM BELOW IS DETAIL OF CBRM. LOCATION

and then some teleprinter/ascii art. The artwork has the equivalent
to the proverbial "X" in chalk on the side of the machine. I also
like the engineering euphamism "mechanically shocking the relay."

In addition to the old "Knowing where to put the 'X'" and hitting
things with a hammer, starting about 03:00 of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL9-Va6_SVY comes to mind

rick jones
--
It is not a question of half full or empty - the glass has a leak.
The real question is "Can it be patched?"
these opinions are mine, all mine; HPE might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hpe.com but NOT BOTH...

In article , says...

I have been looking through
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...9840017669.pdf
which was posted here recently in a different thread. On PDF page 309
there is an example of some of the instructions sent-up via the
teleprinter to the first Skylab crew:

I. PREFLIGHT HISTORY HAS INDICATED PAST RELAY HANG-UPS WHICH HAVE BEEN
FREED BY MECHANICALLY SHOCKING THE RELAY.
2. RECOMMENDED PROCEDURE IS TO STRIKE THE CBRM HOUSING AT THE POINT
INDICATED BELOW. TESTS INDICATE THAT YOU CANNOT HIT THE CBRM HARD
ENOUGH TO DAMAGE IT.
3. DIAGRAM BELOW IS DETAIL OF CBRM. LOCATION

and then some teleprinter/ascii art. The artwork has the equivalent
to the proverbial "X" in chalk on the side of the machine. I also
like the engineering euphamism "mechanically shocking the relay."

In addition to the old "Knowing where to put the 'X'" and hitting
things with a hammer, starting about 03:00 of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL9-Va6_SVY comes to mind

rick jones

Percussive maintenance. Sometimes you really do want to hit it to fix
it. ;-)

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

On 8/15/2016 7:54 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
Percussive maintenance. Sometimes you really do want to hit it to fix
it.

Back in the tube days, it's amazing how often that worked.

One special case was old car radios. They had mechanical vibrators that
"chopped" the car's DC battery voltage so it could be transformed up to
the high voltage that the tubes needed. When those vibrators got old,
it took a good hard rap to the top of the dashboard to shock them into
operation.

Vaughn Simon wrote:

On 8/15/2016 7:54 PM, Jeff Findley wrote:
Percussive maintenance. Sometimes you really do want to hit it to fix
it.

Back in the tube days, it's amazing how often that worked.


It wasn't just the tube days. We used to do this to the digital sonar
I worked on in the military. The backplane of the card racks was all
these little fine wires. Over time they would develop 'opens' and
things would stop working. When you didn't have time to actually go
in there and redo the wirewrap on the backplane, you could frequently
'fix' things temporarily by pulling the chassis out and slamming it
back in.

I really upset a junior technician by doing this when we absolutely
had to get the thing back up and operating 'now'. "Why did they spend
a quarter of a million dollars training me if you're going to do
that?"


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw