From: Michael A. Terrell on Apr 18, 8:00 pm

wrote:


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.

Great! But Fort Monmouth changed considerably from
when I was there in '52 to when you were there 20
years later. :-)

A prime example was that there was NO CATV or any
TV courses available nor the curricula for same.
I'm not even sure where the AFRS (later AFRTS) guys
went to get electronics training for their broadcast
stations. AFRS was quite separate from regular Army
communications.

Also, in an odd quirk at the time, ALL rank promotions
were frozen while IN any school. Once one got out
(no "graduation ceremonies"), they started counting
time-in-grade. :-)


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.

Sigh. I didn't know the Army had gotten so generous
with conversions of skills to civilian licenses. :-)

I lucked out on assignments after Signal School, even
though it was overseas. Couldn't have asked for a
better assignment except maybe in Europe as part of
ACAN.


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.

Heh heh heh...sounds all too familiar. While we may not
have been in the same place, we got T-shirts in the
same style! :-)


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.

Outstanding that you are still active! My old office
cubicle buddy from RCA days (only a month younger than
myself) suffers from Parkinson's disease (kept down
from deleterious effects, thank God), yet he had
enough soup left that he fixed me up with an HP 608 and
HP 606 generator when I got married (again). He's
on 20 meters every Saturday after fixing up his old
tube clunker transceiver.

I'm still bopping around with only minor problems, none
worth mentioning. But, I come from a family of long
livers (oh...about three feet or so, some would say).
:-)