About 20 years ago the U.S. Navy got so upset about the level of competence in EMC labs that they funded a program to accredit them and to certify EMC people. To their credit the Navy decided to use the money to set up programs in independent, disinterested organizations.

They arranged with NARTE to certify EMC engineers and technicians. For years NARTE had been certifying broadcast engineers who adjust and set up commercial broadcast transmitters. To accredit laboratories they arranged with NIST to set up an EMC laboratory accreditation program within NVLAP, a laboratory accredititation program that had been doing that work for years.

To their credit NARTE and NVLAP, using Navy funds, assembled a group of about 30 EMC professionals from government, commercial laboratories and seminar instructors who were busy perpetuating the rules of thumb based on little or no foundation in E&M theory. These folks wrote the original set of questions for the first NARTE exams and the criteria for judging whether a lab should be accredited to perform EMC testing to MIL-STD-461.

Since I was one of the dimwit instructors who neither worked for the government nor an EMC laboratory, I was perceived to have no conflict of interest. In fact I had no interest at all save for the bucks I got for doing the work. So I was one of the two assessors of the first laboratory assessed. I think Walt McKercher was the other assessor, but I’ve cleverly forgotten. In any case it was the Navy EMC lab at Point Mugu. We flunked them. There wasn’ta piece of currently, properly calibrated test equipment at the facility. Some of the gear hadn’t been calibrated for more than ten years and looked as if it had been kicked over the uprights for at least a half-dozen field goals.

They always had two assessors in those days and sent us from the right coast to the left coast and vice versa on purpose. The next lab we assessed was a commercial laboratory that had no quality control manual and no quality control program. Talk about six-stigmas. We flunked them too. The Navy was right, the EMC laboratories were going through most of the motions but their measured data was no better than a wild-ass guess.

Some years later NAMIS and VD (excuse me, VDE) got into the act and acted as if they had invented the process. Not to be outdone the FCC put together some rules out of left field. The original Mil-Specs had been open field measurements, MIL-I-11748 and MIL-I-16910 (Ships), which gave you the true electric and magnetic field. Right. If you believe that I’ve got this nifty bridge...

The military figured out that it rained, snowed or was hot outside and what they wanted to know was whether one piece of equipment interfered with another, fields be damned. They figured out an indoor system in a small, relatively inexpensive shielded enclosure that gave them the scoop: the equipment probably will interfere or it probably won’t. But the FCC and the Europeans had to reinvent the wheel. Everyone had to invest in an outdoor open field site. Now they want everyone to invest in a 3-meter semi-anechoic chamber to make the same measurements to deduce whether the equipment probably will or probably won’t interfere.

As for the accreditation process, everyone now has excellent test reports – the product. And everyone has a compliant quality manual because it’s audited about once a month. Nearly everyone has a crappy open field site because they seldom use it and can’t justify the upkeep. And they have a geriatric EMC guru who hasn’t bothered to write out his knowledge of how the lab works. Some of them are now neglecting to perform many important steps in their measurement procedures and trying to implement steps in their QC program that they don’t understand because their guru was hauled off to a nursing home. You think I’m too harsh? You should go out there and look at a few hundred labs.