[GreenKeys] Tape Relay backlogs

[Andy KN4UCL]

nice...!

On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 9:37 PM Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net> wrote:

> In my student days long ago one professor was much above the rest.
> Dr. James W.Green, Jr., Brig Gen US Army (retired) previously a
> professor at West Point.  One time we got him to speak at a meeting
> of the ham radio club - needless to say a bunch of interesting stories.
> One I recall was about a message center in the Philippines which was a
> torn tape relay station.  They had the equivalent of clothes lines
> strung across the center and used clothes pins to hold pieces of tape
> awaiting transmission, sorted by destination and precedence.
>
> When he first went on active duty after graduation from USMA he was
> sent to the Philippines.  He had built his own ham equipment and had
> it shipped to his new duty station.  When it got there, the vibration
> caused by the ship's engines had taken it completely apart - he had
> not used any lockwashers.
>
> The Officers' clubs, Army and Navy, requested live reports of the
> annual Army-Navy football games from the radio people.  Every year partway
> through the game propagation would go out and leave the game unreported.
> The clubs decided the service radio people were incompetent and one year
> contracted with RCA to report the game.  Same thing happened - there was
> just a time and place when propagation did not exist.
>
> He told about the communications arrangements for Mac Arthur's return
> to the Philippines.  I don't remember the particulars, but lots of
> RTTY channels and some AM voice broadcasts.
>
> At another time he was in charge of the Signal Corps radar school.
>
> One of his reasons for retiring and joining the engineering faculty
> of the university in his home state was that at West Point he was
> teaching mainly future Army officers who needed a good education in
> communications and electronics, but he wanted to spend some of his
> remaining years teaching students who would be practicing engineering
> as a career.
>
> In studying RTTY communication I wanted to get a look at the manual for
> the AN/FGC-1 demodulator, a Bell Labs design much used in WW-II, a 7-foot
> tall rack of equipment.  I asked Dr. Green how to get a copy.  He picked
> up the phone, called a nearby Army fort, and said to someone
> "This is General Green
>        At the University of Arkansas
>             and I need a copy of (the manual number)"
> It came a few days later.
>
> How I loved that man!  It would almost be worth starting the degree
> program all over just to be able to take all his courses.
>
> Jim W6JVE
>
>         ---
>
>         "Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
>         "No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
>                 Meredith Willson, The Music Man
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