[Qcwa] Not Exactly Military

[qcwa@mailman.qth.net]

Hi:

I've never been in the service but I've worked for the Army for 27 years.  Most of that time was with the Military Traffic Management Command.  MTMC set up an HF Emergency communications system amongst their various terminals all over the world.  In the MTMC Eastern Area HQ, (Bayonne NJ) where I worked, we had a bunch of Harris RF-350 Transcivers, four 7-30MHZ LP's on 40 foot towers, atop an 8 story building.  Unfortunately 3 of the Rotors failed almost immediately after installation and never got fixed.  The station was also used for inflight aid (phone patches for VIP's) and for Army MARS.  I volunteered to operate at times, regret I don't remember the callsign.  

It was fun to put the Harris transceivers on the ham bands barefoot, there were only two problems.  First, they had no tuning knob and it was very difficult to use the scan button to hunt for CQ's.  Second, they almost never worked.  Most expensive bookends I ever saw!  (Anybody know what they cost new?)  We acquired about a dozen Kenwood TS-450's and they always worked!  In support of the Haiti deployment after the Gulf War, we used PACTOR to send text messages.  We used Inmarsat terminals for voice and faxes during the Somalia deployment.  I got sent to Europe on 2 hours notice to train the soldiers how to use them.

I never got to use any radios during my Gulf War (I) deployment, just commercial telephones.  The military phones never worked.  At Khobar Towers, our billet, MCI set up 100 telephones for troops coming back from the field - the lines were 10-deep most of the time. 

I regret that I never joined the service.  As an Army Civilian programmer/analyst, I've been small-arms qualified, went through the tear-gas chamber training, pulled week-long 24/7 Staff Duty Officer tours and got deployed to a war zone.  No veteran's preference, but I never had to salute anybody or move or paint anything.  All in all, it's been a great career and I owe it all to Amateur Radio.  Were it not for the microprocessor articles I read in radio magazines during the early 70's, I never would have discovered my talent for programming.  

Best 73 de KA2E  

--
Mike
http://home.att.net/~ka2e