Yup, in most hydraulics it's the tube size that's spec'd; the numbers 6,8,10, etc, are 1/16" increments so a 6 is 3/8 tube, 8 is 1/2, etc. AN stands for Army/Navy, bit different specs in some ways but IIRC, will mate up to JIC fittings. Stated thread sizes are gonna be bigger, no way around it.
I was 33E at Devens, they needed 2 more instructors as my class was graduating so took the top two in the class, I was one of 'em. Taught there a couple more years, then somebody thought an instructor would make a good troubleshooter, so I got sent to several different parts of the world to "make things better".
Ended up after my 4 years working at Memorex in the SF bay area, started my own video repair biz with ANOTHER agency guy, later launched a startup audio/video/calibration biz with 2 other guys in Honolulu, couple years later Memorex asked me to come back (this time to their digital development lab), everything there was fun EXCEPT the management so after a couple years we moved back to Oregon after my dad died - spent the next 35 years in industrial automation/control in rare metals plants, finally pulled the plug on that 8 years ago.
The hydraulics I play with now are a bit smaller than the ones were at work; none of my tractors have 300 horse hydraulic pumps moving 3 and 4 foot diameter cylinders on 1000 ton presses
That's the REALLY truncated version, but probably enough "thread drift" for now... Steve
