Strangest Calibrations You've Ever Done

[Ronin]

I once calibrated a pH meter for a radar site.  The probe was overgrown with greenish, algae-looking substance/material.  I remember thinking to myself, "what the $%@& are those folks up to over there" ?  I still think to this day why you'd need an old gnarly pH meter for a radar site.  Heck, even if it was for the aquarium in the break room, would it really need to be calibrated to within +/- 2%?  Just plain strange man.

[Mikey]

Cal'd a cheap Korean-made 100 gram electric balance I bought off eBay at home with a roll of freshly minted pennies.  Accuracy was +/- half a cent traceable to US Treasury Dept and Wikipedia.

[Hawaii596]

I just remembered the strangest "methods" I've ever used. 

I've done numerous mission/volunteer trips to Haiti (I haven't been back yet since the earthquake, but planning a trip for the future).  I worked at a religious radio network in Port-Au-Prince called Radio Lumiere (you can search for and find them on the internet - great organization).  My company at the time (Motorola at that time) donated a bunch of test equipment, mostly surplus things like spare 8903B's, 8901B's, Tektronix 7000 Series mainframes and plug-ins, etc.

One of the main things I did while I spent a week or so in their service lab at their main studios was to "calibrate" their test equipment.  They had a bunch of very old, often cheap brand name instruments dating back to the 60s.  Pretty much all of it had never been calibrated.  So I had the task, with no traceable standards of intercomparing and optimizing readings on all of their instruments.

[Foghorn1776]

About 5 years ago I calibrated a bunch of numbered ping pong balls for the North Carolina state lottery using a go/no go gage and a mettler balance.  The tolerances, especially for the weight, were really tight (+/- a few micrograms).  I always wondered which games they were used on.

[Hawaii596]

I actually, indirectly used that information (sort of).  A while back, there was a very large award amount in our state lottery.  Although I rarely participate, I decided to give it a shot.  So in my normal over analysis of everything, I copied and pasted into an Excel about 10 years or so of lottery history to find the statistically highest probability winning numbers.  I don't remember the numbers, the the odds were surprisingly even.  There was some difference, but not much at all.  I'm sure some lottery scientist has evaluated statistics versus weight tolerances on the ping pong balls to keep it very even.  So you were doing your part to help assure those statistical lprobabilities stay as even as possible.

[jomonajar]

Back in the early 90's, I had on opportunity to verify the stamping force of the U.S. Mint stamping machines located in San Franscisco. These were HUGE stamping machines located on the second and third floors. We used force transducers to measure the force while jogging the machines down slowly as they approached the transducer. The stamping dies that were used on these machines were the same dies used to make the new dimes, nickels and quarters. I'm talking like 100k lbs of force came down . On our last machine, the max force appliled by the machine was not adjusted. That meant the max force the machine can produce was applied to our transducer and it mushroomed!
Very cool place to visit let alone go behind closed doors and see the whole operation!

[flew-da-coup]

UL wanted a customer of mine to have his windows XP computer clock calibrated. I had to calibrate the clock @ 7HOURS +/- 16 MINUTES. Pretty stupid I thought. I have learned that UL Auditors will always find something to justify charging my customers for audits.

[PMEL_DEVIL-DOG]

I've calibrated sensors used in the pitfalls and sewer here at Lockheed Martin. Poop sensors... Sweet!

[Colt45]

Protractors, I was asked to calibrate and mark certain points on a protractor.

The protractors were typical plastic protractors that would be used in any high school geometry class.

[clacoste]

Back in the late 80's in Jeddah at Saudia Metrology I calibrated a test rack which was used to test "Mecca Indicators' for Saudi Arabian Airlines.  These were round indicators with illuminated arrows in the cabin ceilings and they always pointed to Mecca - no matter where on the planet the aircraft was at the time.  They took data from the INS system and via servos drove the indicators.  The faithful would use them during their prayers...as did some members of the flight crews...Interesting calibration, I never noticed the Mecca Indicators on flights until I did it.

[scottbp]

So what old-timer here has ever had the opportunity to calibrate a "bhangmeter"? (A light intensity meter used on spy satellites used to detect and estimate the yield of an atomic bomb explosion)