# 'and when went there the cupboard was bare'



## Robert M Hughes (Oct 16, 2010)

On joining a ship I used to have a morbid fear of finding very few spares and no log books - occasionally realised - anyone suffered similarly ?

Cheers, Bob


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## Ron Stringer (Mar 15, 2005)

Never suffered from that problem because I always sailed on ships where the equipment was on hire from Marconi's. [=P]

Seriously, when at sea I always wondered who kept a tab on just how much capital was tied up in the masses of spares that every ship seemed to carry. When I went to work for Marconi ashore in Chelmsford I discovered that nobody did.

The stores at the depots around the UK and the rest of the world and in the Chelmsford main stores had vast quantities of spare parts and material worth several millions. Much of it was for equipments that were long out of manufacture but which shipowners were unwilling to replace with modern gear. When the Red Duster fleet collapsed in the 1980s, the ships went to scrap - as did the radio gear. That left all those spares with no possible application. Everything remaining was written off the books and scrapped in the 1990s. (Cloud)


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## Naytikos (Oct 20, 2008)

On British ships my experience was that there were usually plenty of spares, but never the actual part I needed. I do recall the UK MIMCO depots being reluctant to part with decent quantities of stationery; message pads, pens, etc; and you probably had to sleep with someone to get your hands on Marconi beer-mats.
With 'foreign-flag' companies there were no problems at all; they would supply anything I asked for so, I must admit, I tended to carry at least one of every resistor/capacitor/transistor etc and a selection of the common 74-series ICs plus, of course, 2 x 3cm and 2 x 10cm magnetrons, several TR tubes, enough Tx PA valves to swap the lot twice-over, and so on. Seems a bit excessive looking back, but with 3-month round trips it would have been a long wait to get a part I didn't have.

No problems with stationery either; IMR or SAIT used to send a packing case full whenever I ordered it.


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## Quiney (Oct 2, 2008)

It was never a problem. The cupboard was full of spares, all marked 'Used but working'


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## Baulkham Hills (Jul 11, 2008)

Quiney said:


> It was never a problem. The cupboard was full of spares, all marked 'Used but working'


"Used but good" is a perennial label on spare gear, I think this comes about when faultfinding and replacing items with spares and finding it makes no difference but not bothered to replace it back with the original. On the other hand there are people that cannot get rid of rubbish like old magnetrons that are failing to produce enough output and that have been replaced, then not ordering the spares but keeping the old ones "just in case of an emergency". | 
Trouble is now with centralized storage systems these dodgy spares appear up as unused spares, and if you order another one the office comes back and says you have a spare onboard and why do you want another. Over a longtime as R/O I found radio equipment was very reliable and on a few ships later after the introduction of GMDSS I removed all the radio room equipment for disposal, and the original spares were still in their boxes with few of the original supplied spares missing presumed to have been used.
GMDSS spares consists of a few glass fuses and you are ready to go. The duplication of equipment is supposed to cover the need for spares.


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## mikeg (Aug 24, 2006)

Back in the days when most radio equipment was valve based a loan of a valve tester during drydock or a similiar layup would have sorted out the 'Used but Good' stock. I have an Avo tester now though, only because my hifi uses twenty valves.


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

On my last trip - 1967 - a Mobil tanker - there was a valve tester in the radio room. I had never seen one before. I think it was perhaps not for the RO but for the Engine Room where there were control systems running on valves. I think it found its way into the Radio Room by mistake. 

The spares were well stocked with only a couple of 'used but good' among them, so I ditched them and ordered up new. A new drive motor for the KH radar was on its way before I left. The original was 'spoking' like mad, even after I took it down from aloft - it was a long way up there ! - and the Electrician cleaned it up in his workshop. I had to put it back up too. I would love to have known how long the replacement took to arrive, and how it got aloft.

David
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## Robert M Hughes (Oct 16, 2010)

Interesting comments on this subject - I feel Siemens were not as organised as Marconi in this regard being a much smaller marine section in a vast Company - additionally I joined many ships in overseas ports where the comms. contact was unlikely to be a direct Company man. I joined one ship in Vancouver and due to the Captain's impatience to set off refused me the time to inspect the gear - two transmitters were down - resulting in our return to port. This was 50's equipment.
Bob


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## david.hopcroft (Jun 29, 2005)

The thumbnail is the MOBIL ASTRAL/GMOH - a Siemens (AEI) ship. 

David
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## alan ward (Jul 20, 2009)

Robert M Hughes said:


> On joining a ship I used to have a morbid fear of finding very few spares and no log books - occasionally realised - anyone suffered similarly ?
> 
> Cheers, Bob


Not being a sparkie it couldn`t but I joined the Labrador Clipper to find that after 6 months no catering accounts or inventory had been kept and with Christmas only a few days away no Turkey or indeed any seasonal stock was on board.


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