[Collins] Art Collins and Collins Radio

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On 7/6/2014 10:24 AM, Glen Zook wrote:
> Building 402, when I came to work at Collins in April 1967, stood alone.
> That is, there was no other building near it. Then, in late summer of
> 1967, work was started on both Buildings 406 and 408 just west of
> Building 402. There was, maybe, about 50-feet between 402 and 406 and
> then another about 50-feet between 406 and 408. On the main floor of
> Building 402, most of the area was open an contained row, after row, of
> women doing assembly operations on all sorts of circuit boards. The
> northwest corner was the photo lab. Buildings 406 and 408, along with a
> portion of Buildings 401 and 402, belonged to Process Division.

402 wasn't the building I worked in. It was separated from the north 
central expressway by a parking lot and an antenna test patch. The NW 
corner of the building I was in was the high power transmitter lab with 
the microwave lab mid on the west side. A machine shop was south of the 
microwave lab and the warehouse was the south half of the building.

Sometimes in summers it was so over cooled that flannel was comfortable 
though my temporary boss didn't think flannel was professional.
>
> My job title, at Collins Radio Company, was Senior Engineering
> Administrative Assistant Process Division E/B Dallas Region! Basically,
> my job was as the liaison between the engineering personnel and the
> production department in the Process Division. Process Division made the
> circuit boards, thin films, and thick films for the other divisions.
> Collins hired me right out of Georgia Tech and my starting salary was
> what a number of the engineers were making with up to over 5-years
> experience.

The paint department silk screen section wasn't capable the quality my 
diagnostic panel needed so I had to have those made in Cedar Rapids. We 
tried a commercial silk screen shop in Dallas but they were working on 
outdoor sign scale, not panel details. From the same artwork, Cedar 
Rapids silk screened products looked like they had been printed on an 
offset printing press, but from Richardson they weren't readable.
>
> Among my duties was formulating budgets for the entire Process Division
> Dallas Region. These budgets were revised every 6-months for an 18-month
> time frame. My secretary, as ordered by Harry Passman, the
> vice-president over Process Division, did a weekly summary of all
> expenditures that was presented to Harry Passman and the managers over
> all the groups in the Division every Friday morning.
>
> About a year after I went to work at Collins, a "helper" was hired. He
> had graduated from North Texas State University (now University of North
> Texas) over 2-years before I graduated from Georgia Tech and his
> starting salary was $200.00 a month less than my starting salary.
>
> As for the Burroughs 5500 at Georgia Tech: I am VERY familiar with that
> computer! During the fall quarter of 1966, I had a required class in
> writing programs for the computer using Algol. Before one could actually
> get a program to run on the computer, the program cards had to be run
> through a process called "syntax". The card reader for that process like
> to play 52,000 pickup several times every night. That is, the syntax
> reader would literally throw quite a number of cards into the air. Of
> course, the cards would be hopelessly intermingled and the computer
> center staff would just put the cards into a waste basket. As a result,
> one soon learned to make multiple copies of their cards. There were like
> 6-each card punching machines at the computer center and students had to
> wait, sometimes, for several hours to get a "turn" at the machine.
> Fortunately, my major had an additional 4-each card punching machines,
> located several buildings away from the computer center, that were
> available only to students with particular majors. Often, there was
> absolutely no one waiting to use those machines. As such, it was very
> easy to make like 10, or more, copies of the program cards.

At Iowa state on IBM 360 systems with cards it was standard operating 
procedure to punch a sequence number in the last few columns (comment 
space in Fortran) and then with the cards in box or drawer to run a 
magic marker lengthwise of the stack, once parallel to the edge and 
another at an angle so the card order could be restored mostly by 
aligning those marks. I think all the cards I still have (source codes) 
are so marked except for the case of blank cards that I've kept.
>
> The Process Division "Art" project was called "CCCS Marine". This
> project involved building the "bridge" of a yacht which was capable of
> leaving Newport Beach, California, going down the west side of Mexico
> and Central America, making its way through the Panama Canal, then going
> up the east side of of the continent all the way to New York Harbor
> without the need of anyone "touching" the helm. This was long before
> GPS. The bridge was, after completion, to be shipped to the Collins
> facility at Newport Beach where the hull of the vessel was to be
> constructed. Of course, after Art "sold out" to Rockwell International,
> this project was abandoned.

That would have tested the design well, but was mostly a wild dream in 
those days. Probably dependent on Loran C. Not impossible, but that 
yacht hull might have to be quite a bit larger than just what was 
necessary to haul the proposed passenger, fuel, and propulsion load.
>
> In 1973, during the time when I owned the Motorola reconditioned
> equipment center for the south-central United States, I was persuaded to
> purchase a 1958 Cessna 150 airplane, N5572E. The "new" president of
> Collins / Rockwell was learning how to fly in that particular aircraft.
> Because of this, the aircraft was allowed to be housed in the Collins
> hanger at Addison Airport. It was in this hanger that the 3-Boeing 707
> aircraft, used as "Air Force One", were housed to service, and update,
> the communications equipment at least twice a year. There would be Air
> Force personnel, with loaded M-16 rifles, stationed surrounding the
> aircraft and the little, green, Cessna 150 sitting by the door.
> Glen, K9STH
>
In my consulting business I mostly chartered 172 and 182, though
occasionally took a 210 and on one occasion a 310 plus a 177 a couple times
but put that and a Grumman trainer on my list of aircraft I'm not 
chartering. In the later years often 172 RG. I recall hiring a 152 once 
to look at farms I was considering purchasing. I liked the rough air 
stability of the 182, though charter pilots that had been flying 310s 
all week sometimes had difficulty getting it to stop flying because they 
made the final approach 10 knots too fast. That charter operator's crews 
landed the 277 with partial gear up a few times and had gear trouble 
with it on one of my trips, and one time had to get it hand cranked to 
return home. Hand cranking a fuel injected engine wasn't easy when the 
standard starting procedure was to pump fuel until it was flooded, then 
turn off the fuel and with throttle full open, crank until the flooding 
was cleared and it began to run.

I didn't ever do a take off or landing, though on most trips I rode in 
the right seat. I did fly parts of trips and was pretty good at visual 
navigation even without charts from having visited many Iowa towns and 
with Ames at the junction of US 30 and I-35 and with the UP double track 
main line paralelling US 30 getting to Ames was easy. Easier with a RDF 
tuned to the college radio station on 640 during the day with a 5/8 wave 
vertical radiator.

> Website: http://k9sth.com
>
73, Jerry, K0CQ, Technical Adviser to the Collins Radio Association