RadioBanter - View Single Post

April 19th 05, 07:05 AM

wrote:

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

I was born in '52. :-)

I was never at Ft Monmoth. I was tested at Ft Knox, Ky. I caught a
lot of hell for it from other soldiers at my different duty stations
because they didn't believe anyone could test out of a three year
school. The station manager in Alaska told me "No civilian knows a damn
thing about electronics". In fact, someone on another newsgroup was
mailing me and calling me a liar because he insists that no one ever
tested out of a tech school. I am requesting my full military records
package from the archives to shut him up.

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.

The radio station at Ft Greely, Ak was built in 1948 as the first
permanent "Armed Forces Radio Network" station. It was the first site
built with commercial broadcast equipment instead of modified military
gear used at some sites during WW II. The radio transmitter was a gates
BC250 In the early '70s AFRTS claimed to be the only all tube network
in the world.

I wish I had a photo copy of the FCC license for the two stations.

The radio station: frequency 980 KHz.
Power: 250 watts, or as deemed necessary.
Expiration date: Until no longer needed.

The TV station: Frequency Channel 8.
Power: 500 watts, or as deemed necessary.
Expiration date: Until no longer needed.

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

Actually, it was the FCC who no longer accepted the military records
in lieu of testing.

There were a few other skills that were convertible. I know guys that
worked high pressure steam who said they just walked into the state's
licensing office with their military records, paid the fee and left with
their state license. There were a couple EEs who worked at the Ft
Greely power plant. That was where I first got my hands on the IEEE
magazine. Of course, air traffic controllers were in demand in civilian
airports. Ft Tucker trained helicopter pilots and Air traffic
controllers at Carin Air field, a few miles from the Daleville gate.
The airfield was Air Force, but the students were Army and Air Force, as
well as some foreign militaries. My main job was to maintain two 12
channel CATV systems and 350 monitors used to distribute educational TV
and weather data to student pilots.

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.

http://home.earthlink.net/~mike.terrell/Projects.html has some of my
test equipment listed. Its on the "Current Projects" page because I
went two years that I couldn't do anything so I am in the process of
checking out all my equipment before I start using it again.

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).
:-)

My retired dad lives next door. Other than some problems with his
hip he's in better shape than I am. I'm 100% disabled due to a laundry
list of "Little" problems. I still try to keep busy with some
projects. I am trying to set up a program to collect old and dead
computers, refurbish them and give them to disabled vets in my area.
This part of Florida is full of retired and disabled vets trying to
survive on a small pension or Social Security.

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida