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30450 Radio Relay Equipment Repair / Wideband Maintenance. TRC 24 / TRC 97 and MRT 2 Testing. What I did in Radio Relay,
basically I worked on a very special type a radio which could handle up to 24 voice channels at a time. Think of 24 phone
calls mixed together into one and then transmitted over the air 17 to 95 miles per link. The next radio relay site could break
down the signal and route them to phones, radios, or teletype machines or crosspatch the incoming signal to another
radio and retransmit it to a distant location for increase range. During times of national emergence, war games, or training,
groups of special trained people would drive in or fly in to an unimproved location and building a Tactical Air Base (TAB),
communication relay site (RELAY), or a distant communication site / Forward Operating Local (FOL) The time frame for these
tasks to be completed varies from three and a half hours to seven days. The Trc-97 was billed as the world's largest transistor
radio which is not technically correct because it did have a Traveling Wave Tube (TWT) and a Klystron tube, both of these
tubes do not look like anything that would even fit inside of an old T.V. The TWT was twelve inches long and fully encased
in sheet metal. The Klystron weighted about 35 pounds and was made mostly for cast iron with some porcelain in addition to
having two very large magnets bolted to it for beam stabilizing. Confessions of a Mobsters or Why I left the Mob! The basic
answer is most mountains are made of rock! Have you ever try to hammer in an eight foot long grounding rod into solid rock,
what about driving elephant/sand stakes into a rock mesa, or maybe you like your weather a little bit cooler, so what about
putting in a death-man anchor system into Alaska permafrost. Would you like try installing and anchoring a pair of twenty
foot parabolic antennas on a sandy beach in FL even when it easy, it's hard! How hard is it to dig a five foot depth hole
in the sand, if the water level is at two foot high? And for a little local color in the morning armies of crabs invaded the
antenna footing, your boots and anything at ground level. The Fine Dinning, real green eggs and gray ham, beans and wienies,
beef patties or some other type of mystery meat! C-Rations made prior 1972 had cigarettes and worlds worst pound or marble
cake. This stuff was so dry that you could take it out of the can set it on a flat surface, fill the can that it came with
full of water pour it on the cake, refill the can a second time, pour it again and still not a drop of water would escape
from cake! The crackers plus peanut butter, jelly, or cheese was okay, but a caned fruit was a highly guard prize. The Housing,
sometimes we used twelve or twenty man tents and hot racking it. The mourning showers were in eight man test set up in a dirt
field, utilizing old wooden pallets as flooring with exposed nails ensuring no one linger in the showers to long. Be there,
done that, got the blisters and splinters, tore it down, pack it up, cleaned it up, realignment it, and did the whole job
over and over, again and again, couldn't afford the Tee shirt, so I keep the ball cap and left!
1976 was the Bicentennial anniversary of our country, it was also the year Jimmy Carter was elected
into office, and the start of my third year in the military. At this time I was debating weather or not to make the military
a career. I loved my job but I hated the job location, in the middle of Georgia. Eighty-five percent of the people I worked
with had just came from Turkey or had orders going to Turkey, at that time Turkey had a reputation as being one of the worst
assignment for military personally. After being in Georgia for thirteen months I was desperate to get off that base! I went
to personnel and volunteer for world wide duty, I should be gone in four or five months max! While I was waiting for personnel
action to kick in, I started researching other career fields. The career field I was in was critical undermanned and the only
way to get out of this career field was to get into one more critical undermanned. The only two career fields which appealed
to me were Precision Approach Radar and something called Digital Subscriber Terminal Equipment or DSTE for short, and maintain
by Electronic-Mechanical Communications and Cryptographic Equipment Systems Specialist. Looking for a new job. I talked to my roommate, Mike Estes about maybe switching career fields,
the next day I got the deluxe nickel tour of AN/MPN 13 Radar van. The impression I was left with was, this is a very complex
piece of equipment that needs allot of fine tuning or daily massaging. I had heard war stories that this beast had a reputation
for being a hanger queen, and did not liked to travel up and down the freeway or go four wheeling to our deployment sites,
sometime this puppy just rolled over and played died. I still have lasting memories about walking thought MPN-13 with
its' solder in peanut tubes, IC chips, and watching a radar alignment being made by sticking a mirror on a stick and turning
it 90 degrees when walking fifteen to twenty feet away and making an adjust while looking at a reflecting in the mirror of
an O-scope. Another thing about this radar witch seamed a little odd to me is that the whole radar unit sits on top of a
turntable, if the prevailing winds change and aircraft started approaching and landing from the oppose end of the flightline
the radar unit need to be rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, why the military didn't opt
for a second set of antennas is beyond me. Maybe a disagreement with the bean counters or some sadist s.o.b. who thought
might be funny to watch the radar troops get there daily P.T. by pushing the Radar van around in inclement weather. My trip to visit the Blue Whale. Two or three days
after my tour of the Radar vans, I talked to Senior Airmen (almost a Sergent) Dicus about arranging a walk thought of the
DSTE Vans. SRA Dicus lived across the hall in from me in the barracks and was an avid off road motorcycle rider. The following
Monday at O'dark thirty in morning we left our quarters and headed to Wideband maintenance area. In the very back of
our marshalling area sat two DSTE vans. The vans were heavily secured with Sargent & Greenleaf padlocks after Dicus removed
the padlocks, He walked inside by himself and sanitized the area or checking for unsecured classified paperwork, looking
for classified zeros in the chad bucket, and ensuring that all Playboy magazines (*) were turn upside down with the appropriate
cover sheets place on top of them. Only after Dicus had completed all these checks I was able to enter the vans. The first
van was called The off line van it held five ASR 28 teletype writers, an 029 IBM punch card machine, a couple of typewriters
on desks, a photocopier machine, and another closed off section for the distributing of messages. The other van was packed
with the Blue Whale, The AN/FYA-71 Digital Subscriber Terminal Equipment. What all this goobly goop means, it was a main
frame computer with numerous heavy duty peripheral devices, such as, page printers, IBM card punches, paper tape readers,
card readers. The size of these components varies from a page printer the size of clothes washers to a Low Speed Card Punch,
one and half times the size of a horizontal food freezer. Decision time After eighteen months
of seriously trying to leave the Peachtree state things were starting to happen in Aces! Behind Door number One, I had an
all expense paid vacations John Hay R&R center in the Philippine Islands for the next two years with an option for a third
year available! Door number Two, Crossing training was approved for Radar. Door number Three, My cross training had be approved
DSTE. Now for the hard part, The Decision. Radio Relay was great job with allot
of outstanding people, with a great deal of job satisfaction and above average promotions. Down side, In the states you're
very limited to the place that you can be assign to. Stateside forty percent work outside there career fields doing electronic
installation, another forty percent work are assigned to Mobility groups providing communication for national emergency and
war games both of these assignment requires thirty to seventy-five percent of the time in the field the only difference
was one group is housed in a tents and the other group has an expanse account and stays in a motel. Both divisions have to
meet very tight deadline's. The only time you truly work in your career field is overseas this can but very stressful.
Half of all assignment are overseas in unaccompanied countries, you go it alone with no families allowed. Some of my coworkers
on they second or third enlistment express concerned over European assignments, a great place to visit but expense as
all hell or basically I can be poor in the United States or totally broke in Germany and can't afford to go anyway. Spain,
Italy, and the Mediterranean these assignments are high prized! Alot of people assigned to these place try to homestead it,
this makes it even harder to land an assignment they. John Hay, The R and R center in the mountains. This is a hard one if I took this assignment I
would be living in clouds for two to three years and at the end I would be back in the same situation, I now face. I guess
this is not an answer just a big delay in making a decision. Regrettably, I will have to pass on this assignment.
Precision Approach Radar. The upside is working with hardcore electronics on a daily. Downsides, limited civilian application,
Eight or nine month long radar school at the University of Biloxi Ms. on the gulf coast. If the radar is turned on you're
at work, 24 hours a day, 7 day a week, 365 days a years. This could really put a dampener on your nights, week-ends and Holidays!
First runner-up.
And the winner
is BLUE WHALE. DSTE seamed to have a lot going for it and meet both my short term and long term needs. The upside a very high
security clearance, adding a new skill set to my electronics resume, DSTE requires a environmental control environment, needs
to air conditioning and heated, which means you work in an air condition building. Forty percent of all DSTE operators are
females. All large military facility have a DSTE system, another words you would be station at a major base and not a mountain
top. Limited chance of being assigned to a mobility unit. This career field is the perfect jump off point for cross training
into data automation or strange cryptographic. A balance career field referring to overseas vs. stateside assignments. DSTE
maintenance personnel work a eight to five Monday thought Friday work schedule! Seven month long school for six hours a day
in northern Texas. The down side, leaving a whole lot of good friends I've made over the last three years. NEEDS A TRANSITION ADD
TECH SCHOOL, DAVE, KAREN, AND MOTORZISKI
LIFE IN THE DSTE
FIELD
This monstrosity was sometimes a mechanical nightmare! Until you
made a deal with devil, sold your youngest child, or had been lucky or unlucky enough to work in a ready busy communication
center which was undermanned and overworked. I think anyway something could be done or might be done might was the philosophy
that was used in the engineering of this beast. Sometimes I wonder if Rube Goldberg (**) wasn't a consulting engineer
for this system. For example the Low speed card punch had six fan belt, eight or nine tooth driven belts, three lobed cams,
knifes, bell cranks, interposers, solenoids, pushrods, pinch rollers, micro switches, actuators, gates, a chad bucket, and
ferrite-core memory. This is real old school technology. A core memory uses a matrix of small metal rings sometimes called
donuts, with numerous wires interlace through these rings on the X and Y plane plus diagonally. How the hell can I remember
this shit from basic electronics at Kessler airplane patch in beautiful downtown Bio-Toxic (Biloxi) Ms., but forget were
my car keys are at is beyond me! Should I say something about the all power supplies with crowbar protected circuits and
the with weak under rated SCR, probably not, and too make things more interesting for neophyte all mechanical adjustment
are interrelated you could not just made one adjustment, you had a make a series of adjustments and check many others adjustments
to ensure that you did not induce a new problem into the machine while clearing the initial problem. Add to this, that a
machine problem could be caused by a mechanical malfunctions, electronic anomaly, or just an operator error, sometime it
could be very challenging trying figure out which path to troubleshoot first. ----------Does not fit needs to be relocated!
And later our paths would cross again......when I went back overseas Dicus was station there and our tours over lapped for
a few days, small world!--------- Two years later I would me reassigned oversea, Sgt Dicus was being transfer to the P.I.
and our tour over lapped by a couple of days small world. 30671, Electronic-Mechanical Communications and Cryptographic Equipment Systems Specialist FYA71,
DSTE, Digital Subscriber Terminal Equipment. System nick name THE BLUE WHALE. The DSTE system was installed in most military
communication center. The system consisted of CCU or Central Control Unit, Page printer, Low speed card punch, High
speed card punch, Punch card reader, Paper tape readers, Low speed tape punch, High speed paper tape punch, Modem, Box, and
Cryptographic equipment, Crypto Control Unit, and a Cook patch panel. The Base Communications Center receives 98 percent of
all messages for a given location. All payroll, finance, personnel maters, assignments, promotions, logistic, press releases,
classified and unclassified flow thou the base comm center. I think being a DSTE technician was very interesting because
you needed a very good understanding of digital electronics plus a very solid command of mechanical principle. PROGRESS WORK
IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS analog discrete logic digital and analog logic
(*) The reason for all the Playboy magazines beyond the obvious was because of
Jimmy Carters titillating interview in the November 1976 issue in which he states "I've looked on
a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times" also because of his later
announcement That if elected he would cancel the B-1 bomber program, the
ladder comment did not sit well with the military, also by default being the closes military base
to Plains Georgia we would become one of his support bases. (**)
Rube Goldberg's cartoons became well known for depicting complex devices that performed simple tasks in deliberately
over-engineered convoluted ways. (***)Bio-Toxi
or Biloxi what can I say about Biloxi Mississippi, my spell check doesn't recognize it as a valid
word, and when things get worst. Neil Simon used it as a setting for new recruits
go through basic training in Biloxi Blues. Garry Trudeau satirize it in the Doonesbury cartoon strip as being one of the
least desirable places to live. Four or five months after joining the military I visited my Grandparents. My Grandmother
ask me what type of plane I flew? and my Grandfather asked if the roads in Biloxi were still tore up? I info my my
grandmother I work in electronics and did not pilot planes, I think she was a little disappointed I didn't say B-17s
because that was the aircraft's she uses to build. To my grandfather I responded Yes the roads are still tore up in
Biloxi because of Hurricane Camille which that hit three years ago. My Grandfather started laughing, after
a few second he spoke " I was down there in 1907 at that time they were saying the roads were tore up because of the
Civil War"
WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS
WORK The 5th MOBs NCOIC of Wideband Maintenance was Senior Master Sergeant (SMsgt) William Rains, He was a soft
spoken individual, if I would say something to summarize his style of management it might be, Train them, support them,
give them the parts, tools, and the equipment they need to the job and then stand back and watch the magic happened ! WORK
IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS WORK IN PROGRESS Hanging 8 ft Dish off of water towers.....I never realized the power
senior NCO have. Ascot/the blue dicky/working nights/reassignment of officer
HAM RADIO HAM RADIO
HAM RADIO HAM RADIO HAM RADIO HAM RADIO HAM RADIO If,
when you viewed my profile you stop at the picture of my friend, The Prionus Californicus, The Long horned beetle a.k.a.
The Winged Warrior and stared at the object to left of the lamp and deduced it was a bottle of Booze, Wrong! You fluked
the Rorschach inkblot test again! Its a Uniden cordless phone model number TWX977 If you have question, just click
on the picture! Now that this issue is resolved, why don’t you go into the kitchen and garb us a couple of Brewskis?
and we'll continue on with our magical mystery tour. The Next Generation
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