Place of manufacture for DEC equipment?

[Rod Smallwood]

Well the other story I know but can't confirm also concerned a fork lift 
truck and Heathrow.
DEC10's were shipped with the cabs bolted together and sitting on a long 
shipping base.
The cargo plane (CL-44?) had a very wide door and the system could be 
got in at a narrow
angle and secured on the centre line of the plane. This was done with 
the help of a large scissor lift.

At Heathrow they did thereverse. Park the scissor lift at a not quite 
parallel angle to the plane.
Push the system onto the scissor lift and lower to the ground. Then 
crane it onto a low loader for transport to site.

Well one day there was no scissor lift at Heathrow  and the plane was 
needed elsewhere. Some bright spark
had the system pushed up to the doorway and put the lift truck forks 
under the front end.and backed away swinging the front end out of the door.
A second truck  then  put its forks under about two thirds of the way 
down and  backed away.  The back end  cleared the door OK.
Sad to say the forks were not far enough under the system and it fell 
off and went down abount twenty feet.

It was very bent. Then surprise surprise two days later a team from DEC 
10 manufacturing arrived with several pallets of parts and proceed to 
rebuild it then and there.
They did it in a week and  the system was delivered on time  with very 
few knowing what had happed.

Rod Smallwood



On 05/05/2015 15:08, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2015-05-05 15:16, Paul Koning wrote:
>>
>>> On May 5, 2015, at 5:38 AM, Rod Smallwood 
>>> <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I think the best one I ever saw was an  LA36 at our Heathrow warehouse.
>>> I worked for the Terminals Product Line and one of my jobs was to go 
>>> with the insurance man
>>> to look at damaged in transit claims.
>>>
>>> LA36's were shipped screwed to something like a half sized pallet,
>>> Then a cardboard box with no top or bottom over that and finally a 
>>> lid  on top
>>> Then the usual strapping holding lid and box to the pallet.
>>>
>>> They would be unloaded off the plane by fork lift truck.
>>> They had managed to get one fork through the cardboard outer,
>>> then through the back of the steel plinth, the two circuit boards 
>>> inside,
>>> the front of the plinth and then the other side of the box.
>>
>> There’s a story (possibly true) about an RP03 that was being 
>> air-shipped from Boston airport.  The pallet was not properly 
>> strapped down, so when the plane applied takeoff power, the plane 
>> started moving but the RP03 stayed in place.  It exited through the 
>> rear fuselage and landed on the tarmac, bending the corner of the 
>> frame quite a lot.
>>
>> It was taken back to Maynard for inspection.  The local techs put a 
>> couple of bricks under the bent corner and applied power. The drive 
>> worked fine.
>
> I suspect it's not true. While I can believe the drive not being 
> properly secured, I do not think it would exit the airplane. Witness 
> the military 747 that went down in Afghanistan(?) where the internal 
> cargo shifted enough that the plane couldn't fly anymore. The cargo 
> still stayed inside the plane, and I suspect that was a hell of a lot 
> more than an RP03...
>
> I would expect the RP03 to have been banged up some, though. But maybe 
> still working.
>
>     Johnny
>