[R-390] R390/R390A really "classified?"

[Glenn Little WB4UIV]

A little punctuation goes a long way.

Glenn

On 5/27/2019 3:54 AM, Roger Ruszkowski wrote:
> John, It is a shit and shinola subject.Enjoy the read.I launch Time Line at Contact in the Desert later this week for real.Some days in my real life exceed my own imagination.Where were you day on the DMZ in Korea when I jammed an anchor rod through a rusted mortar round I was standing astraddle of while looking up for directions.I am a radio repair guy hanging with my antenna buddies on the DMZ in Korea a cake walk assignment after my year in Viet Nam and  about to be victim of Korean war left overs.  Can I have an attitude check here? The United States Army Security Agency is a no bull shit spending your tax dollars still today and listening organization. We have no plans to leave this week but if the winds of Washington change and we are on the way out the door please attend to a couple important things you would not want to be ask about if captured by the other side. Can you say Bengasi. Do you remember the USS Liberty?  Like every emergency response enacted to plan there is an order of pre planned steps designed to reduce the final total impact on the six sigma community involved in the emergency. A large contingent of the military act like a 1 D 10 T in very stressful situations (normal human reactions come into play). Therefore the preparedness must train in advance down to this ugly detail of level as preservation on investments (thus minimizing on collateral damage). When the 122s  are dropping in and the 101st Airborne is loading 8" under the direction of a Hughes Fire Control Radar System in response,  your first consideration is for the paper quality as ass wipe, your second consideration is for the paper quality as ear plugs. Light the fuse on a 122 and an 8" shell would fall on you before the 122 reached its destination. One in the barrel, radar online, rocket up, barrel swivel and auto fire. When the gun servos auto spun the 101st Airborne  crew was ready to load the next round. Hughes fire control went one for one until the incoming quite for many months. Need an acre of jungle cleared? Buy a 122 with free set up service of the GPS locator device. Once the customers learned you could not run from the device to escape the coming land clearing operation or dig deep enough to endure the Jello ride sales plumed but P. T. Barnum explained the continuing cash flow. It still works in Beirut today and one day all at once. They can not kill us all.  The United States Army Security Agency used the explosion buffer zone around the 101st Airborne ammo dump as an antenna field for dual use on the real-estate one fence and field to mow. It was an Army base war or no war.Sorry I fell asleep. for dual use on the real-estate one fence and field to spray and keep defoliated. When the VC went shooting at the 101st Airborne ammo dump, the response was a very state of the technology over kill response. The 101st Airborne did not give a rats ass about us ASA remps. We keep the generators running for the air field lights, antenna field lights, and yard lights all night on the chopper pads and convoy assembly areas in the ammo yard. We were 75% of the warm body mass on the  one sixth of base bunker perimeter we shared with the Ammo yard guys the civilian Asphalt company that put up zero manpower for night time guard duty. Once every ten days you did an up all night three remps and a man that wants to go home doing his last few days at the ammo dump across the road from the air field and a coming flight home. Do not ask or we will help him beat the shit out of you and log you as a lost 1 D 10 T that walked into the wire and rats. Out taking a piss and you fell face first into a dumpster of empty ration cans, a couple bent up stands of razor wire plus a tangle of 100 foot long lamp cords from the used Claymore mines and woke up all the rats. Then you and twenty rats each attempted to make a fast exit. You do not have any rat bites and we will not need to tell your mother about this night. Military medics know how to explain things to NCO and Officers with out the generation of additional paperwork. Serving in the Agency offered duty at locations with above average security and very over average aerial  spraying because the antenna field was full of left over fire works from the ammo yard in past years.The ammo yard had been hit more than once. The events were historic film footage. The antenna did set in the explosion buffer zone around the 101st Airborne ammo dump and they had used their dual use property more than once with out a proper police call.We needed acres of weeds keep under control and we could no do drive the flame throwing trucks in the antenna fields any more.That is not EOD procedure. If you are on the USS Pueblo and about to be boarded by the North Koreans and no one can prevent it, you may not want to explain all the extra receiving equipment, tape recorders and very interesting story books (case files). After all the USS Pueblo was not a floating cell tower for sailors at sea. If you are copying clandestine spark gap on the USS Pueblo you likely do not want that known to the your new host for the next few years and well beyond your term of enlistment. One analysis heresy is the spark gap was a ruse to suck in an American Asset. The Russian and Chinese were range testing and we were baited in. Some in Washington are giving you away faster than you understand. We are not trying to get that spark gap operator, discovered, silenced, captured, or killed what ever the motivation for the transmissions. Until we have a good copy and then analysis we do not know if this is a pop up opportunity or not. You are about to become a prisoner of war. What should you do to minimize your coming agony? Just having an education in Phnom Penh could get you killed. Revisit Rwanda as an exercise in minimizing loss in uncertain times. All of life is not sheltered by the 101st Airborne 24 7. Contrary to conspiracy theory stuff was being down graded and set free all the time.On the end of the contract the Military had procured the property rights.And what ever the technology in the document it just is not that leading edge any moreand likely being taught at the University in a technology class.Or Tom Clancy has it published. Top secret, Secret, Confidential, No Foreign Nationals, Restricted and a dozen more words are in use to limit the loss of intellectual property rights.How fast we can kick your ass is a Hughes proprietary data point that has never been sold to anyone. Secrets are about business function not system function. Some things you have read have application in time and place.Asking vets to mix and match for the fun of it is not a conversation starter.I have worked in buildings with more thermite setting atop cabinets than the 101st Airborne had on hand over in the ammo park and we knew the numbers because we copied all phone calls in Viet Nam on every system and exchange.Life with the real stuff sucks. Both the North and South Koreans would like to step back from the DMZ.And light up a fire works display that has been in assembly since the armistice.As a start on the neighborhood redevelopment in the world largest wildlife refuge that straddles the DMZ centered in a 10 kilometer wide civilian no go zone.I had a good back wind with elevation and I spit into North Korea from the guard point on the fence.The building contents were I worked on a mountain top that over looked that guard post were state of the art and some were one of a kind instrumentsthat included the R390's as the system detector of choice. Did you not see those IF deck mechanical filter band pass images last week?Just how unstable were those new radar transmitters and did they actually work well?We copied it, pointed an antenna at one and it moved, mixed it down into HF, watched our counters set rock solid while an operator tried to keep the R390 on the signal.The HF paper dispenser was the paper recorder of choice and we sent rolls to Washington for personal use. Black ink on white paper what good is it? From the mountain top we watched the South Korean Army play field games on the south side of the DMZ. Can we detect the radar signal here?South Korea wanted to know if the North Koreans were just looking at them with a new flash light in hand?Analysis have a report to produce daily and it is hung on the wall to be read.Hay everyone this is the current bull shit story and if you have heart burn you know who you need to see pronto.Check this for errors.You would think the reading room was a stall in the latrine to hear it talked about in the hall. Once upon a time while serving at Phu Bia the honor of house mouse came the day after a night of guard duty. The ten day count was, day off, night on guard duty, that day and night off, next day house mouse, and back on 12 and 12 for a 240 hour count.The maintenance shop is not required to visit the reading room. As house mouse you did do daily housekeeping to include the analysis areas. It was the job of the house mouse to care for the I corps commander and entourage when they come to the reading room. We keep that end of the military as far out of our capability as we could.  Our commander once told the I Corp Commander that he would be happy to drop a couple mortars across the base on to the  I Corp Commander  bunker so those folks would know what incoming sounded like. Just because my boss knew that fellow at I Corp had missed II and Korea and never heard an incoming round in his military career while in combat did not save my Commanders career as he had never had that experience himself. A Chopper flew across the air field, our antenna field, the ammo yard and points beyond hill 180. The chopper was doing night inferred mapping and throwing flares as flash bulbs for the visual image with the infer red details.  We are the ASA and we knew for days the photographer was coming. When the first flare went off our kids listening to the radio chatter on the air field hit the alarm and sent every one to the bunkers. When we were photographed forty flashes into the flight we were all standing in the street waving at the helicopter and yelling for more beer it was going to be a long night. We doubled our population in the thermal images as still warm and vacant plus live in the street. We were a science test and knew we were a science test and were pissed and had a response prepared. When I Corp ask what our problem was our commander was not in the know that the troopies in his command had abused their need to know. A couple naïve speedy fours were sent to assure our Commander the incoming was real the flares were real and just two different events in the same set of sounds and time. Would the VC drop a couple mortar rounds on the ammo yard just before the photographer arrived? If we know it they know it? Yes sir. Our Commander went foolish on the phone and ended his career that night. What you did not think we were recording those phone lines.The Vietnamese girls hung up their head set in the telephone exchange and filled out to the trench line to get in on  what ever was happening but the photographer had passed them by and 200 girls in the middle of an army base compound at 10 pm are not present in the photographs shown in Washington DC. I hear tell the tapes from the phone exchange were also played in Washington DC.Our boy could not just say I am checking sir and we will stand down now on your directive. For once the real military knew more about the current situation than the ASA commander knew and he was not ready for them to be right on that evening. Weekly visits from a real general became part of life in the field station the military had real concerns for our health and safety as ASA officers were using the site to chalk promotion points. The Army put that training program under formal review. Much education occurred in the reading room at Phu Bia   New years midnight was a sight to see and you only seen one in five. Hearing is a human problem. The machines are awesome at listing in a whole range of spectrum I had three R390/A in Phu Bia with addy ons I was ready to set a thermite on.I had two more at Torii station Okinawa I was ready to give the treatment to. There were different and you still do not need to know. In general life is not a problem.Different day and location and the extra hole in a standard military receiver may not be some thing you want to discuss with your new host.You may not be able to disappear a whole R390 with thermite.You can disappear and extra hole with thermite.You can pawn the mess off as a 1 D 10 T moment of no scientific or military value. Twice upon a time some of my R390/A were receivers of interest. Roger.
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Glenn Little                ARRL Technical Specialist   QCWA  LM 28417
Amateur Callsign:  WB4UIV            wb4uiv at arrl.net    AMSAT LM 2178
QTH:  Goose Creek, SC USA (EM92xx)  USSVI LM   NRA LM   SBE ARRL TAPR
"It is not the class of license that the Amateur holds but the class
of the Amateur that holds the license"