The grassroots repairmen of an armored regiment under the Beijing Military Area Command are now all equipped with portable gadgets, by which they can get repair tips and swiftly remove difficult and complicated malfunctions of their equipment.

　　On August 16, the reporter witnessed the whole process of removing malfunctions on-site by a repairman of that regiment with the help of portable gadget. At 9:00 on that morning, a tank in a training session suddenly broke down. Several repairmen rushed to the site and check carefully where the malfunctions were. Then, one of them took out a portable gadget from his pocket and clicked on with a magnetic pen. Immediately information on the causes and emergency repair measures for this type of malfunction was shown on the screen. Then they repaired the tank in line with the tips given by the gadget. Before long, the tank was repaired and returned to the training ground.

　　"Don't belittle this small gadget, for it has a database stored with analysis information of 800 difficult and complicated malfunctions and repair tips, the information falls into five major categories, covering maintenance and repair tips for 10 different kinds of equipment." The reporter took over the gadget from a repairman and found that it was quite similar to an electronic dictionary. The only difference was that the gadget not only stored names, telephone numbers and personal information of some experts and professors, but also was able to ask for help from weaponry experts thousands of miles away via computer and telephone.

　　By Lu Yimin

　　(August 19, PLA Daily)