[wakani]

First a Sea Story.

1983 I was on a USG trip to China, inter alia, to take a look at their manufactoring capabilities. In one particular factory, I was observing the capacitor production system. At the end of the process were some rather impressive looking capacitor testing machines. But they were testing the capacitors by hand. I watched one young lady testing about 60 units per minute but it seemed she would throw units in the "bad bucket" independent of what the meters on the testor said. When I asked why the reply was something to the effect "...we are very proud of our quality control, we test each unit individually. We are expected to find 10 percent that failed the test, no more no less." Thus the red light blinked bad unit, but it went in the "good bucket" and the green light blinked good and it went into the "bad" bucket. I exagerate somewhat, but in a nutshell that was what was going on.

My question is are there some bad apples as far as capacitors out there, exp electrolytics? Are the high voltage "mini electolytics" okay to use?

I pick on capacitors because I think they are the weak link in those old radios.