
Story No. 1 · East Germany · c. 1987–88
The Red Corvette, the Bearings, and the Stasi
A routine delivery of ten one-way bearings. One five-minute handoff. One spontaneous U-turn before Berlin—and a bright red 1975 Corvette that made the whole thing look like espionage.
“Take the note out of your left rear trouser pocket.”
Read Story No. 1 →

Story No. 2 · Cairo, Egypt · 1989
The Coldest Room in Egypt
A handmade air-conditioned room was built inside a sweltering print shop to protect Planeta’s Varicontrol console. The workers discovered it before the electronics arrived.
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Story No. 3 · Kempten im Allgäu · c. 1989
The Missing 360 Degrees
A proven IFM retrofit suddenly behaved like an intermittent fault. The encoder was counting perfectly—it just did not know which half of a 720-degree impression-cylinder cycle it was looking at.
The answer showed up at three in the morning on a Gasthaus napkin.
Read Story No. 3 →
Troubleshooting method
The Machine Is Only Part of the System
Talk to the crew. Read the installer’s annotated manual. Look for fresh tool marks. Sometimes the clue is the part of the story somebody left out.
Field note in preparation →
Story archive
Blocked the Entrance
Another true case from the Troubleshooter archive. The full record will be added here when it is ready—without inventing the missing parts.
Coming to the logbook →