RadioBanter - What is the ARRL's thought on having good amateurs?

wrote:
wrote:
wrote:
From: on Tues, Oct 31 2006 6:07 pm

Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
Dee Flint wrote:
wrote in message
wrote:

Must you put on your stupid face? Can't you take a typo?

Brian, it's the usual PCTA "answer" in debate. :-)

Dipschitt trips all over a typo and can't punctuate his way out of a
wet paper bag.

Ah, but he "saved the day" at some small-time embassy when
he used morse to "synchronize his RTTYs!" :-)

He said.

Lacking any valid response, they resort to misdirective
attempts at personal humiliation about minutae that
have NO direct bearing on the SUBJECT.

They must be very, very clever.

They ARE! They tell you so, right in here!

True enough, but I think they're wrong.

Since Heil is bound and determined to find typos and
misspellings, all we have to do is scrutinize HIS
epic prose in here and make him wallow in his own
typographical errors...forever and ever... :-)

I'll point out his punctuation errors a few times and let it go. What
Heil is never going to forget is working out of band Frenchmen on 6
Meters. Perhaps when he passes, I start an amateur club memorializes
his DX expertise and Operating prowess. It may not be in the same
League as the Barry Goldwater station, but it'll be a start.

Maybe you could get some space for it in France? Or even
Algeria? :-)

Fr. Guyana?

Our military isn't perfect. Many of those who enlist aren't all that
sharp. Most are shoved into a career field in which they have no
interest. Most aren't going to make the military a career.

You must be remembering the draft years when, even though the Air Force
didn't use the draft, the draft generated a significant interest in Air
Force service.

That and the USN. The USAF and USN weren't considered
as direct combat military branches by draftees worried
silly about harm to their precious bodies. Back in the
Vietnam War era 33 to 50 years ago, that is.

Has Jim approved your use of 1973 as the end of the war, or was he
still tucking tail as late as 1975?

He might still be looking for the "correct" answer somewhere
on the ARRL website...

I like 1973, no matter what Jim thinks or says. And until we get or
MIA's and POW's all back, I think it's still an open matter.

Some are
lucky enough to have skills obtained prior to military service. Some of
those are fortunate enough to serve in a field in which they have some
expertise or interest.

Some with grave disappointment that they couldn't be hams in particular
combat zones.

Funny thing, but the military doesn't consider amateur
radio "contesting" as a useful skill in maintaining
communications 24/7. Military personnel placement types
MIGHT give such recruits a nod in the direction of some
communications IF (and only IF) there is a directive they
have for a communications specialty.

Mmmmm. I would worry about someone not receiving standardized
training. Could you ever be sure they were getting the job done
unsupervised?

Not really. Outside of MARS I can't see any military
comms facilities using ham gear. Maybe an old Hammarlund
SP-600 civilian HF receiver that the military bought a
lot of...

The military thrives on standardization.

When I enlisted in the Army, I was assigned to Signal Corps
and Signal Basic Training WITHOUT being a licensed amateur
and hitting only the medium percentile in the morse code
aptitude test! Sunnuvagun! :-)

Yeh, I was trained in meteorology which was in the "General" category,
my worst area. Somehow I managed dinstinguished grad in both the 3
level and mandatory 7 level schools.

"Level" terminology not understood. ?

1, 3, 5, 7, 9 level

1 is a graduate of basic training. 9 is full performance level for a
careerist.

Good on that, though. From what I've seen of WX stations,
it is NOT some high school science project stuff. :-)

Military wx personnel are a lot more competent than what you're seing
on television. I don't know where those guys come from although most
of them have collitch degrees in meteorology. Our biggest challenge as
Airmen and NCO's was to retrain LTs and Capts in standardized methods.

Oh, yeah, in March 1952 there was a definite WAR going on,
but in northeast Asia, not southeast Asia. The Army had
definite needs for infantry, artillery, and armor
personnel replacements but I was picked for signal. My
only license then was an Illinois driver license. :-)

Army needs...

Infantry, artillery, and armor are the "line" units involved
with direct hostile action...in case some civilian wanted to
know. They take the hits right off.

The only homegrown WX that the Army has are the ARTYMET guys. They run
up PIBALs for wind speeds and directions for calculating trajectory.
The rest of the weather on Army installations and deployed are USAF.
That's how I ended up with 2ID.

Thing was, the Army thought ALL personnel were "soldiers first,
specialists second." That's why we got to play sojer in da
woods after our regular specialist duty hours.

You gotta believe me when I say that all us USAF guys were thrilled
with USA assignments...

I recall geting woke by the armory saying I had to come down and clean
my dirty weapon. I was between 12 hour midshifts when the call came
in, so I was lacking a sense of humor. I called them back and told
them my weapon was clean, read me the weapon number. Yep, it was my
weapon. So I put on my uniform and went down there. Gave em my weapon
card, and they handed be a filthy rifle, not just powder residue, but
sand and mud, too. I asked them not to hand out my weapon to anyone
but me from now on. Probably a direct duty MOS.

What we got there in Heil's (altered?) version of his
personal biographic factoids is strangely similar to
the undetailed, grandiose CLAIMS of the former "war
hero of the USMC," Major Dud (Robeson). :-)

Other than being in country, Heil has made no claims of direct action
or heroism.

As far as I'm concerned, he was just another REMF who, years
later, is playing everyone as if he were the big hero in "a
country at war!" [those REMFs are spotted miles away...]

He may have been a REMF, but I don't know.

No problem on proof for me. I've got my records and some
of them are digitized (PDF for universality in viewing)
from their original form. The official archives in
St. Louis (NARA Military Personnel Records Center) has
them for proof by anyone with access.

I'm good with what Heil has presented.

I'm not. He was "in" the USAF but that's all I will accept.
That military time should have been good for his guvmint
pension accumulation time, though...probably his whole plan
for his future?

Said he lives in a tar paper shack in WV. That doesn't sound like
bragging, and it's something I can believe.

FWIW, I think the state dept was merely a vehicle for dxpeditions, not
a significant grab for a fat pension.

Why aren't the communications billets merely a direct duty assignment
after basic training?

They can be. That's how I did it. I never set foot in an Air Force
technical school. Of course I'd already been a radio amateur for seven
years when I joined the military. I was awarded my 3-level right out of
basic training. I went directed duty to Barksdale AFB after ten days of
leave after Amarillo.

Lackland. San Antonio.

Yes, Lackland AFB is in San Antonio. Amarillo AFB was in Amarillo.
That's where I went through basic training. Amarillo. Amarillo.

I see. Wikipedia confirms Amarillo AFB as an inprocessing base.

Did you catch what Robesin's got?

I have no idea of what you mean, Brian.

Stories about the military.

Oh, my, here comes Major Dud Robeson the II. :-)

Naw. He's playing tag with Mark.

Whatever. :-)

I think all of Marks out-assholing Robesin has finally paid off.

Since 54 years ago I've been acquainted with (perhaps) hundreds
of military personnel both as one myself and (much longer) as
a civilian. I don't know of ANY military personnel who "DIDN'T"
receive any specialty training after their Basic Training (or
Boot Camp for USN and USMC and USCG).

There were a handful of billets that were DDA. Most of the unskilled
work was handled by folks getting kicked out for various
non-adaptability issues.

No doubt. Thing is, Heil could usually claim anydamnthing he
wanted knowing that few in public venues of now would have been
in the Air Force in Vietnam. Just like there are few amateurs
who were in the State Department. Given that kind of an
"audience," he can get away with all kinds of brags...and
saying lots of generalities without going into specifics.

My favorite is his brag about working out of band Frenchmen on 6M.
What an idiot.

The USAF signals people have a long tradition of keeping comms
alive and well 24/7 just as the Army did it (USAF came out of
the Army in the later 1940s). "Getting the message through"
at any time of the day or night is the watchword for both USA
and USAF signals. They don't do it the "amateur way" as a
HOBBY.

I got to visit SAC's "Giant Talk" at Elkhorn, NE. That was so cool.
And the Navy broadcast stations on Guam. I used to receive their wx
rtty and fax transmissions when in the field with the 2nd ID/ROK. Fun
stuff. Later I had to rely on wx rtty only from Diego Garcia, and
WEFAX from the orbiters in Somalia.

Hmmm...more "glamorous" kinds of comms than I was involved in. :-)

Constantly changing antenna lengths and orientation. We used a lot of
Alden 9315TR and TRT's. And WEFAX or HRPT strip imagery. We did have
a setup in a comm van for wx intercept that never really worked that
well, and tons more expensive than the Aldens.

Then we got a dedicated Tactical Automated Weather Distribution System
(TAWDS) that had a bank of HF transceivers, modems, and a Nye Viking
telegraph key. Nobody knew what the key was for.

As I was leaving the service, Harris Corp in Melbourn was building us a
tactical DMSP terminal. I made a fdew trips to Melbourne and Ft Gillem
to review its progress. Funny thing, I think the great big DMSP vans
were originally "tactical."

I would have liked to visit some of the old ACAN-DCS sites of
the 1950s-1960s but most of those closed down or got very
changed. Fort Deitrich in MD became a chem warfare center, no
longer the central point of WAR (Washington Army Radio). The
"Frisco" Army station was really more inland at Davis, CA, and
has long been closed down. I understand the AFRS-VOA big station
at Delano, CA, also went down. AFRTS used to have an adminstrative
Hq only about a mile and a half from my house in Sun Valley, CA,
but they moved that way east to an ex-USAF airfield; those
buildings haven't been leased out to anyone else yet and its been
like 8 years ago! [the dirt shadow of the old raised lettering
of the building complex is still visible from La Tuna Canyon
Boulevard] "My" old ADA site was taken over by USAF in 1963 and
they ran it until 1978, then everything given back to Japanese.

I arrived in ROK in 1979, and the switch at Fuchu was in use for wx
comms.

SAC ain't no more now and USAF has had a rather massive re-
organization of units and mission roles.

Reorganization was the only way to manage the 50+% drawdown. By
reorganizing the AF at the same time as the drawdown, it kept everyone
confused. We didn't notice if we were screwed up because we were
hemmoraging people, or if we were screwed up because the reorg plan was
bad.

Strategic Air Command is now called Strategic Command or StratCom for
short. They lost almost all of their tankers to Military Airlift
Command/MAC, renamed Air Mobility Command/AMC. Tactical Air Command
/TAC was renamed Air Combat Command/ACC. I guess they put all their
thought into the new name for ACC.

One thing good is
that the old "oil burner routes" aren't there in civilian
aviation notices...the old SAC practice runs on "targets"
similar to USSR target locations. Be thankful that MAD worked!

Almost nobody alive today knows about that.

There IS an exception: AFRS and (later) AFRTS. A Special
Services branch...entertainment (and, supposedly morale)
folks in uniform. Armed Forces Radio (and Television)
Service doesn't operate from combat zones, doesn't even
"fight" for ratings. It is show biz.

Yeh, I watched them once or twice in the ROK, probably once during each
tour. I did listen to the radio, and enjoyed the "shadow" and other
old-tyme boradcast stuff they would put on autopilot overnight (worked
a lot and worked a lot of night shifts).

The "T" wasn't stuffed into 'AFRS' until after 1960? Now
there's an AFRTS station on each USN aircraft carrier! :-)

They've got University of Maryland instructors on board, too.

AFRTS can download from various comm sats and rebroadcast
now, if there still are some AFRTS terrestrial stations.
Back in the 1950s AFRS depended a lot on HF relay from live
USA broadcasts such as the baseball World Series. That would
come in to Japan at about 2 AM the 'same day' get taped and
then rebroadcast AS IF it were 'live' that afternoon.

Yep, same deal with TV in the Pacific. I heard people complain that if
they read the Stars and Stripes, it would ruin the outcome of the game
that we be televised about a week after the fact.

MARS might be in the same category as AFRS-AFRTS. It was
never essential to military communications despite the
civilian hoopla attached to it.

Yeh, when I was a war planner, I used to hit up the message center
every morning about 6:30 AM, visit the control center, get an update on
wx data flowing from our deployed locations, problems, etc. I'd brief
the Colonel when he got in on the contingency locations, we'd go take
the wx briefing, then head into the CINCs briefing.

MARS had nothing to do with any comm we used.

Same with me and ACAN-DCS. However, the Tokyo MARS station
got 3rd priority level for 1 KW RTTY using the FEC HQ aircraft
relay transmitter. Two-down and three-down NCOs at MARS used
to try and "pull rank" on the night shifts at ADA to 'demand'
time on it. :-) Kind of got to be fun for me when they did,
I just read off the standing orders on useage priority, the
ones signed by the light bird colonel who was then battalion
commander. :-) After a couple years frustration the Tokyo
MARS finally got their own teeny transmitter-receiver site at
their billet...but with a nice new tribander beam.

Regular message traffic was like thousands of TTYs per shift
in the 1950s...running 24/7 of course. Kind of dull after
the first few weeks on the job. Even in the big TTY relay
room at Control (220 TTY tape units) We just made sure all
the Txs were up and running, did the necessary QSYs, pulled
maintenance when scheduled, checked the radio relay systems
(landline backup) to make sure they worked if needed. On a
rare month one Tx might go down of old age and we would do
a frantic antenna connection changeover to bring up a spare
Tx. Once a month the lowest-level contingency plan (a single
30 W AN/GRC-9 Tx-Rs left over from WW II would be tried from
the transmitter site, manned by the only NCO there who could
do morse. Each time the Rx would be so swamped by extraneous
RF that the test net couldn't be heard. :-)

From the 1990s onward,
MARS has taken on a communications role for most of the US
government...and doing good at that...using military MARS
personnel. With DSN connection to the Internet, the "boys
overseas" don't need to wait for surface mail or use
phone patches to talk direct to family and friends.

Or have some creep eavesdrop on husband/wife talk.

DSN is a LOT harder to intercept. Has to be done at DSN
centers using their terminal equipment.

But...in Heil's case WE don't really know in DETAIL what
Heil actually did. He hasn't described it in anything but
vague generalities and intimations of work performed.

I don't even know if it was fixed or tactical, but that's alright.

He implies it was something like "under fire" but that isn't
the info I get from folks who worked HF comms there and not
much is written up in the Army Center for Military History
except NON-morse comms.

To
use Major Dud Robeson's "description" Heil was "in one
hostile action" action. :-)

Coulda been. Don't know. He served and isn't claiming to be a hero.

He was in "a country at war!" :-)

I'm in a "country at war."

Heil sounds off real big, smug and arrogant with "facts."
Thing is, he just doesn't apply those facts factually to
his own (33 to 40 year prior personal history) other than
the usual claims of having "expertise" in amateur radio.
[he sounds like a verbose Blowcode in drag... :-) ]

The smugness is a bit hard to take.

True. He sounds off like being Big and Important. :-)

Sounds to me more like frustrated and little.

Whole government agencies gave up on code. Commercial businesses gave
up on code.

Oracle uses a lot of code.

Heil put on his stupid face again. :-( The "code" referred
to by you, by me, is COMPUTER (Instruction) "CODE."

Sigh...more MISDIRECTION into the general "code."

He needed an opening to show that he knows more than just amateur radio
and guitar.

Yeah, like he wouldn't know a NOP from a JMP instruction if
it bit him in the rump. :-(

Oracle is a business which didn't give up on code.

Bill Gates has an answer for your Oracle.

Very much so! :-) A few billion bucks here, a few billion
bucks there...might even add up to real money! (paraphrasing
Yogi Berra) [thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
for all their many chartitable contributions worldwide!]
I just don't think Bill Gates (or Paul Allen) much give a
**** for morse "code." :-)

I think I'll send Bill an email and invite him to become an amateur.

Excellent! He could probably use a laugh.

Who knows, he just might send a buck or two to the frequency defense
fund.

I know and use a few high-level COMPUTER codes. I know and
use a few Assembler-level COMPUTER codes. Those just ain't
"morse code." :-) My little Apple ][+ can do a third of
a million "words per second." [based on the average number
of clock cycles per byte-word instruction Ain't NO morseman
that can come close to that. :-)

I'm surprised that Jim doesn't try to force Bill Gates to use morse
code as a programming language. Hell, it's digital, right???

Sheesh...the best Miccolis could do is crib the ENIAC museum
PR stuff. :-) Gates could BUY an ENIAC out of petty cash
funds. He could also buy out the whole ARRL if he desired;
any corporation doing less than $15 million per annum in
taxable income would be considered "very small" to him.

Church of Saint Bill Gates... has a certain ring to esn't it?

My current computer box is one helluva lot FASTER than that
1980-era Apple ][+ and goes faster per second with 32-bit
words. My dial-up connection to the Internet (usually 50
KBPS) does about 50,000 "words per minute" just with the
3 KHz bandwidth telephone line. The new set-top cable TV
box we just had installed this morning (has a DVR built-in
plus more cable service channels, all on digital) has an
incredibly high data rate. [our Samsung 27 inch DTV accepts
DTV direct from the new digital service set-top box]

But...we must all "respect and honor" the mighty morse
expertise of the PCTA amateur extras because they think they
typify the "state of the art" in communications mode use.
Greater than 20 "words per minute!" Good grief...

1906 thinking in the year 2006. Ptui.

It will all be over with soon.

I'm getting pessimistic. The Living Morse Museum of Amateur
Radio on HF will continue too far into the future and the code
test with it. Maybe long enough to Rescue the Earth and Mankind
when alien beings from the stars invade us...'rescue' using
morse code! :-(

BTW, I still haven't heard of any amateur writing in here
saving lives using morse code on the ham bands. Wonder why?

The Society for Creative Radio Anachronism might have a gig on it.