Topic: So you've planted it.

  What ? Not sure how to take that.

if your really bothered, take a small motor and fit a wheel collet with a bit drilled out, attach it to a bit of 4"x4" ply
put some velcro on the top of the wood so you can stick your rx to it.
get some m3 bolts and drill 5mm holes in each corner along with some in a thicker 5"x5" wood base
fit bolts through the base with washers, and nuts, then the silicon and then the ply top and loosely put some nuts on to hold it all together.
connect the motor to a small power source, 1.2v ought to do it, enough to make a good high frequency shake, not a jumping bronco
now test your rx on the vibrating table till happy.

  What ? Not sure how to take that.

"Production Reliability Acceptance Testing"  - the process used to shake and bake out the infant mortalities in manufactured equipment.

PDR

"And a brand new one is probably OK too."    Yikes Torques, do you know some thing we don't ? I agree with the rest of your posting though, bang it about a bit, sticky fix it to the washing machine at max spin, (ours tries to waltz across the kitchen and down the garden path, I have a hell of a job getting her indoors off the bl**dy thing !)   If it works okay, into a hack for an airtest, sorted.

I've lost count of the number of new bits of gear that have either had little bits of wire or solder floating about over the back of the PCB, to loose screws - lousy connections - pulled wires, you name it!

One transmitter I pulled apart had a huge length (about half an inch in old money) of tinned copper wire stuck across the tracks on the main PCB - it wasn't connecting but it could have at any moment - been flying with it for years!

Surface mount technology has improved things no end - same with engines which are now 'clean' inside - it used to be perfectly normal to take a brand new engine apart and clean all the swarf out - not so much now!

Most stuff is pretty good, but with the numbers involved, you do get iffy now and again!

I had a Futaba Dual conversion RX that had a vibration fault from new. When it was sent back they claimed it had a dry joint on the crystal holder. So even brand new RX's can have faults 

Although thats the only one in 20 years and I guess I have owned over 100 RX's in the time and maybe significantly more with the majority being Futaba