Environment don't matter

[Reverand.Duke]

For the record:
Not sure who you spoke to, but the contract lab in Afghanistan does NOT calibrate their own blocks.   Not now, not in the past, and not in the future.

Nor do they calibrate any other physical/dimensional equipment that could be considered to be extremely sensitive to environmental factors.

I WILL say that in my experience, the army doesn't put a lot of emphasis on environmental control in the deployed labs.   Then again, the army uses some fairly substandard facilities for the deployed labs--it's not like the old Air Force FastCals.

[CalibratorJ]

Thanks for stating your experiences Reverand.

As an former green suiter who did time in the desert and as a current DOD employee for the Army, I can honestly tell you that we do and have always (at least to my knowledge) stuck to the guidelines established by the Army for calibration. The Air Force has AFMETCAL audits and the Army has QA Inspections done by our version of AFMETCAL auditors. (And yes, we get QA'd in the middle of the desert)

True, the deployed facilities aren't four star hotels or anything, but they do get the job done and there have been HUGE leaps in them in the past 10 years. IMHO there really isn't anything substandard about them.

Just curious, but have you looked at the environment listed on a test report from Agilent or any other commercial cal lab lately? Even the Army specs their temp and humidity tighter than most of them.

I guess in the end, environment really doesn't mean a whole hill of beans unless you are doing phys/D equipment, and even then, with most of the lower end stuff all you need is a stable environment and a 24 hour stabilization period for the TI/UUT/DUT. Of course, as long as your standards are spec'd in at that temp/humidity......