These days, it seems the large electrical firms have no pride left at all.

Once upon a time they would pride themselves on selling machines and equipment that was well designed, well tested and installed by competent contractors, who also had pride.

But no more, it seems. Two examples serve for all: at the South African (SA) Navy dockyard in Simon’s Town, there are two frequency changers. A frequency changer is a motor that runs at 11 000 V and 50 Hz and drives an alternator which runs at 6 600 V 60 Hz. The SA Navy needs 60 Hz since all North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ships run on 60 Hz, and not on 50 Hz.

The two machines were installed in 1961 and 1962. They were supplied by GEC. The two machines have run, uninterrupted, apart from routine maintenance, for over 50 years.

It also so happens that in the store at the dockyard are a number of crates. In the crates are a whole lot of spares for the two machines: exciters, pilot exciters, brushgear, bearings, couplings, and so on. Guess what? They have never been used. The originals are still going strong. The original machines are that good.

Three years ago, it was decided to replace the automatic voltage regulators (AVRs) with electronic ones supplied by company XXX. Each AVR costs the same as an entry-level luxury German sedan (about R250 000), even though the manu- facturing and development cost is a fraction of that.

So the bits were installed and XXX sent around a technician with a laptop to program them. He sat, glued to his screen, tipping at the keyboard and, every so often, going outside for a smoke and to scratch his tattoos.

Finally, he said, that’s it – working! Except it wasn’t. I showed him that the two machines were unstable if running in parallel. I said, fix it. So he got on his cell to head office and came back and said, okay, you connect this wire on one machine to one wire on that machine to there and this wire to that . . . and . . . working!

I said, nope, the machines must be stable, without wires back and forth. Not possible, he said. So I looked at the man and thought, good grief, these two machines run perfectly well without any interconnecting wiring for 50 years and now you tell me that it’s not possible.

So I sent him home and Chris and I sat down and read through the manual and twiddled and set and lo! We got the machines to work fine. These two fre- quency changers are known as Number 1 and Number 2. There is also a Number 3, whose likelihood of running for 50 years is about as likely as the Central African franc and the US dollar trading at par. It has a history which suspends belief – firm YYY got the contract to supply it but, instead of supplying one of its machines, it bought one from firm Z – much like ordering a Merc and getting a Beetle.

The machine was delivered with the wrong reduced voltage starter, so another one had to be found. The contractor used the wrong carbon brushes and so messed up the slip rings. Somebody dropped the machine and damaged the alternator drive end bearing.

This surfaced after about 800 hours of running. The contractor decided that, the machine being 30 days out of guaran- tee, all the bearings were damaged and the client should pay for it. In changing the bearings, the contractor managed to misconnect the motor so it ran backwards, miswire the protection circuits so the motor tripped and put the same old wrong carbon brushes back. Now the machine is making a strange noise.

My point is that the firms XXX and YYY are huge organisations that have, it would appear, poorly trained staff. And given the colossal cheek of XXX sending a tattoo artist to set up an AVR and YYY making the client pay to replace four bearings when only one was gone, and that the fault of the supplier . . . do they care at all? Drives me nuts. Let’s buy from China.