RadioBanter - View Single Post

April 19th 05, 04:00 AM

wrote:

"Caveat," I was in the military, the United States Army,
voluntary enlistment beginning 13 March 1953. Went from
Basic to Signal School at Fort Monmouth, NJ. Amount of
Signal School time spent on morse code? ZERO! NO class,
NO "cramming."

Len, I was drafted in 1972. I was working in a TV shop and repairing
ham radios on the side. They told me I would either drive a truck or be
a cook. I raised hell. I was told by the draft board that if I didn't
have a background in electronics they would not only not draft me, but
they wouldn't even let me enlist because of my health. So a couple
months later I'm yelling at an E8 and a Captain that I was not going to
drive a truck, and I was not going to cook. I told them about the
conversation with my draft board. The sergeant laughed and told me "I'm
going to do you a favor and prove you don't know the first dam thing
about electronics" He scheduled a 6 AM for me to take the 26T20 MOS
test which was called" Television equipment repairman" It was the
Army's equivalent of the FCC first class ticket. They pulled every
trick in the book to make sure I failed, including ripping the last two
pages from the test so only 88 of the 110 questions were there. I had 2
hours & 15 minutes to take the test. I turned it in 17 minutes later.
The sergeant laughed and said, I see you've given up. I grinned and
said, No, I'm done. He started grading it and his eyes kept getting
larger. He got to the end ant went over it two more times then stuck
out his hand and said, "Son, I apologize. You got 82 of the 88
questions right. That's the best score I've seen on this test, even
when I had the full copy." I was awarded 26T20 as a civilian acquired
skill that was a three year school at Ft. Monmoth. I worked in CATV,
CARS, installed a nice PA system for the General's conference room at Ft
Rucker, and did a little RADAR before I was sent to Alaska to the AFRTS
radio & TV station to work as one of the engineers. I made E4 in 18
months and received a letter of commendation from the commanding general
of the three Army bases in Alaska.

After my release from active duty in 1956, I thought it
good to get a Commercial Radiotelephone License. Lots of
job opportunities with that then. Couldn't find a Q&A
book in town but I got a copy of the entire FCC regulations
from a good guy at a local broadcast station, studied that
and got my First 'Phone on the first sitting in Chicago,
90 miles away (didn't walk, rode the train, kept my shoes
on even if there was no snow). Moved to L.A. at the end of
'56, started at Art Center School of Design to become an
illustrator. Worked during the day at Hughes Aircraft,
found out that illustrators didn't make much money, liked
electronics (already spent three years in Army
communications) and switched to Electronics Engineering.
Took me 15 years to complete that due to job requirements
making me miss whole semesters. Got engineering
responsibility, title, and pay before any "certificate"
(suitable for framing) awarded (sheep did not sacrifice
their skins for graduates, regardless of what is said).

Just before I got out of the Army the FCC stopped allowing veterans
to convert the 26T20 rating to a First phone without taking the test
again. I was bored with broadcast anyway so I did commercial sound and
industrial electronics. Later I did early personal computer and monitor
repair.

Several engineers at Microdyne wanted to know why I didn't have an EE
degree because I knew more about some of our older products than they
did. They also knew they couldn't bull**** me when I limped into
engineering with a handful of papers. I was there for results. I could
walk into the engineering department and the place would go quiet as
they looked for any excuse to grab something and leave through the other
hallway. It didn't take them long to find out that I not only found a
problem, I had found a least one valid solution. My supervisor laughed
and told me, "You just won't take no for an answer, will you?" I
shrugged and said, No, and I won't take "Yes" if I don't believe them.

In between semesters, I thought it a neat thing to learn
this morse code stuff, get a fancy callsign to "sign
after my name" (youth can be misleading on what is
important). Got to roughly 8 WPM clean copy using
practice tapes (magnetic, reel-to-reel, cassettes had
not yet been invented in those 60s days). Stopped after
that plateau, wondered "whatinhell am I doing spending
all this time on morse?" I'd already spent three full
years on Army communications at a major station (220
thousand messages a month in 1955), had become a
supervisor, did finally work on microwave radio relay
operations in the service, was now an employee of Ramo-
Wooldridge Corp. in electronic warfare group, and the
Class D CBs had already started. I'd gotten the First
'Phone, worked on HF, was now working on more of the EM
spectrum than any ham of today can use, already had a
good home workshop and was coming along on professional
design. I didn't "NEED MORSE" to GET ON THE AIR. I had
already done that, perfectly legal, without fault.

I had tossed the idea of getting a "title" (the callsign)
since there was MUCH MORE electronics coming along. The
first of the ICs had already hit the market and some of
us were tinkering with the first personal computers,
rolling our own without benefit of MITs or Apple or SwTP
kits (hadn't come out yet). PLENTY of fun and games in
electronics AND radio to be interested in.

I used to "pass a test" every week...on payday. If
I didn't KNOW what was needed on the job, to do the
things my bosses had given me responsibility for, I
wouldn't "pass that exam." No paycheck. Bye.

I never failed such an exam. I never failed any exam
in college courses, either. I just kept on working
in engineering design...and having to constantly keep
on learning. The state of the electronics arts have
NOT ceased to advance...not one iota of stopping.

After all the early problems with engineering my supervisor was asked
to release me to them to be an EET on their newest DSP based telemetry
system. They knew I would iron out a lot of problems before the radio
hit the production floor. I redesigned several test fixtures and
re-wrote most of the test procedures into a form the guys on the floor
could follow. Then I went through all the BS of our becoming ISO 9001
certified. I told my bosses that they better keep the UL inspector away
from my bench during their quarterly audits because I didn't mind
calling an idiot an idiot to their face.

We had basic models that were customized to the customer's needs. I
also did a lot of preliminary testing of new components, boards, and
modules before they were released to production so I had a lot of data
books and marked drawings on my bench. ISO 9001, as they set it up did
not let the techs keep any notes or write anything on any drawing for
future reference. I was no longer allowed to maintain test software I
wrote for an automated test fixture and I didn't want a pencil pushing
outsider in my way while I was working. I had a 350 MHz four channel
scope on my bench, but if a test procedure specified a 20 Mhz scope the
idiots insisted that you couldn't use the 20 Mhz filter in a better
scope. Even worse, they sent someone new for every audit so we had to
go through the same mess each time. One would insist a process was
wrong. We would change it to suit him or her. The next one wanted it
changed back.

BTW I worked on almost every board or module for a special broadband
telemetry receiver we built for the International Space Station. These
days I work on old ham receivers and test equipment when I feel well
enough to spend a couple hours at the bench.

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida