[R-390] ASA

[John Cooley]

I was in the ASA 1970-73 33D20 Recording Systems Repairman. Asmara
Ethiopia, Vint Hill Farms VA. Lots of R-390A’s.
John Wb8wbn

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 9:33 PM dog <agfa at hughes.net> wrote:

> Yeah, that picture on the first page of the 280th is Andrews Barracks,
> those 2 long buildings in the back are  the Prussian/SS barracks we
> lived in. That building on the right is the swimming pool for the 32
> Olympics. That Gruenewald picture is the CW intercept building at the
> base of Teufelsberg. When I was there the NSA site was just a group of
> trailers attached to a central golf ball microwave dish. I think the
> 280th came right after I left, they were changing the name all the time.
> I've got no problem talking about my time there, it's all known, but
> then I wasn't in a combat zone although I did get an Occupation Medal
> because Berlin was occupied. We had Russian linguists and German
> linguists, we listened to the Russian and East German army doing
> maneuvers in the eastern section, I was in the 'Orange' section where we
> had a 64 channel PPM microwave link from the 'Zentral Kommitee'. We made
> OB files on everyone that talked on the system. I got to go to Templehof
> once with a Sgt where they did ELINT with the AFASA. We used to get
> publications from the East Germans that had pictures of out workstations
> including the tape recorders we used in the site I worked at, USM620K.
> Interesting times. Berlin was a real nice city and the Berliners loved
> us, especially if we could talk their language. In a way it was a fun
> time, in others not so much. I was glad to get out and spent the next 3
> years in the inactive reserve and at UofMD. By then we were in the
> middle of VN. I was lucky. Most of the guys that were younger than I
> ended up in VN.
>
> Maybe 15-20 years ago a bunch of us from ALS got together for a couple
> years at one of the fellows place up near Boston. I did get in touch
> with quite a few of them afterwards, but some of them just disappeared
> it seems like. They probably wanted to.
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-- 
John Cooley
(248) 379-9253
wb8wbn at arrl.net