Using analogies is full of hazards if one is not careful.

Why did the manufacturer use 400 Hz for a mobile radar system? Convenience, supplies and finances.
The manufacturer builds avionics equipment. Hence the vast majority of its stock is based on 400 Hz design.
Why not use what is already available in stock?

 

We can hear 60 Hz as a sound, it is a low freq hum. A 400 Hertz signal is very melodic. almost an A on the music scale. Just as sound has different properties so do electrical signals. 60 Hertz is good for Transformers which change one voltage to the other and can travel long distances in a flat terrain. For example elephants can hear an low frequency for miles. While 400 CPS ( cycles per second AKA Hertz) is perfect for human hearing and doesn't it travel nearly as far.

 

Using analogies is full of hazards if one is not careful.

Why did the manufacturer use 400 Hz for a mobile radar system? Convenience, supplies and finances.
The manufacturer builds avionics equipment. Hence the vast majority of its stock is based on 400 Hz design.
Why not use what is already available in stock?

This is actually a great answer. The company does build aircraft, so yeah that makes a lot of sense. I'd buy that for a dollar.

 

Ah! A fellow robocop fan.

 

Using analogies is full of hazards if one is not careful.

Why did the manufacturer use 400 Hz for a mobile radar system? Convenience, supplies and finances.
The manufacturer builds avionics equipment. Hence the vast majority of its stock is based on 400 Hz design.
Why not use what is already available in stock?

The convenience for the manufacture wouldn’t be a convenience for their customers if the customer wanted a ground-based radar he could simply connect to the available mains supply. That’s why I thought it most likely to be a repurposed aircraft radar.

 

What you are looking for is not an analogy for frequency, but an aide-memoire as to why the apparatus must be connected to a supply of the right frequency.
Not so easy, as many thing tolerate quite a wide range, and some don’t: consider how far you can vary the speed of a synchronous or induction motor using a variable frequency drive. You can use the same VFD to vary the speed of an electrical mechanical Clock, but only one frequency would have a useful outcome!

The perfect analogy, which unfortunately would be completely lost on 18-24 year-olds would be about playing 33rpm records at 78, and vice versa.

 

What you are looking for is not an analogy for frequency, but an aide-memoire as to why the apparatus must be connected to a supply of the right frequency.
Not so easy, as many thing tolerate quite a wide range, and some don’t: consider how far you can vary the speed of a synchronous or induction motor using a variable frequency drive. You can use the same VFD to vary the speed of an electrical mechanical Clock, but only one frequency would have a useful outcome!

The perfect analogy, which unfortunately would be completely lost on 18-24 year-olds would be about playing 33rpm records at 78, and vice versa.

I know what I'm gonna tell them. You wouldn't fire a .50 BMG round from your 12 guage shotgun just because it fits.