The Daring Dufas wrote:

On 9/23/2010 10:05 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:

Hey Mike, I worked out at The Kwajalein Missile Range back in 87 and 88,
there was a lot of telemetry going on there, did you happen to be
working in the telemetry field at the time? It's now The Ronald Reagan
Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, I think I know why it was renamed.
There was some pretty cool stuff going on there back in the late 80's
and I'll bet there is some even cooler stuff going on there now. And
speaking of cool, there was a good sized sat dish with a cryo cooled
LNA or LNB right near my living quarters. I loved it out in the islands.

No, I was in that field in the late '90s and early '00s, until my
health failed. Did you use any equipment from Microdyne? They were
still supplying parts& upgrades for the 1100 series they built during
that era. The 1200 series was still in production, along with the
700/1620 series, and the 1400 series. I worked on the launch of their
RCB2000/DR2000 series to move it from prototype to production ready.

I wasn't working on any of the missile systems, I was working for a
contractor building facilities. The only electronic systems I worked
on were the office phone system, the two way radios, any control
problems, access control, Halon fire suppression system, of course,
any of the guys having a problem with a TV, VCR or tape player asked
for my help. I had to rebuild the voltage regulator for the 20kw gen
set on our crew boat. I took it to the TV repair shop there on the
island and found an FET from a TV that worked in the regulator and
had the generator back up and running. The gen set ran a compressor
for the air starters on the twin 12 cylinder supercharged Detroit
Diesel engines. The smart ass captain liked to start those monsters
when I was down in the engine room checking things out. I kept ear
plugs handy, especially whenever I had to go to any of the power
plants. I loved it out there and would have stayed if I hadn't been
transferred to a 20 man housing unit that had 19 smokers living in it.


That's like sharing a four bay room in Army barracks with three
slobs.

Luckily, most of my time after basic I had a one man room. It only
took 15 minutes a week to keep it clean enough to pass all inspections.
It was funny, at Ft. Rucker. I was an E2, but in a slot for an E5, so I
managed to get the key for the assigned one man room. It was a real
mess, and took about two weeks to clean all the old floor wax off the
floor, baseboards and even the walls. A month later we were visited by
a bunch of generals from Washington. One asked my captain who's room
they were in, then said it was the cleanest he'd seen on the whole
trip. When he found out it belonged to an E2 he got mad, then laughed
and said, Anyone who spends enough time to keep his quarters that neat
could keep the room. I barely spent 15 minutes a week. Luckily, he
didn't see the coil of coax hanging outside my window. I worked in the
Weathervision system, which included 17 Cable TV systems. The man that
maintained the civilian cable TV on base gave me permission to run a
drop to my room in the barracks when he caught me repairing the damaged
drop to our dayroom. He figured that if I had cable, I would keep the
two paid drops working for him.



A friend of mine studied electrical engineering at Auburn back in the
1960's and lived in a dorm with a bunch of other typical college boys
of the era, no coed in ancient times. The big thing at the time was
the big AM station in the state playing pop music all day. When my
friend wanted to sleep or study, he would switch on his low power AM
transmitter he had hooked to the dorm's rain gutters and silence all
the radios in the dorm. When he grew up, he wound up being in charge
of the communications division of a major utility company.


Later, I worked at a military TV station, before leaving the
service. Years later I was an engineer at a UHF TV station with a 5 MW
EIRP signal on a 1749 foot tower near the east coast of Central Florida.


--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.