Some serious white stuff!

Some serious white stuff!
Story contributed by Steve Buchanan


From: Bkstr4x4@aol.com
Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 10:54:42 EST
Subject: Station
To: jbetters@ussvance.com

Steve had just viewed the Association web cam which brought back this memory:

Man, that is some serious white stuff!

Reminds me of digging the path from the radio station to the generator shed at our radio station in Germany. I was a trick chief (shift chief) with 3 other tech's on 24 on/ 48 off. in the service.(26V20 microwave radio repair) at an isolated site in the Fed. Rep. Ger. near Munich, and we lived in a Gausthaus on the economy (really tough duty) lol.

When we lost power due to weather, the station would go deathly quiet. To the point that, if you were sleeping, you would wake up even before the alarm could be sounded from the downstairs radio room. The two story building had offices and sleeping quarters on ground level, and the radio room was sunk in the ground in an underground bunker type arrangement.

All you would here was feet pounding down the stairs as the junior techie's ran to open the circuit breakers while I went to the Gen. shed and fired up the two Kurtz&Roots 45 KVA generators and then had to sync them in parallel, then slam the breaker to the station. Once the lights came up, the guys in the radio bay had to reset all the Xmitters, recivers and 1000K amplifers. If this wasn't done within 3 min, we had to declare a power outage, and answer for it. I almost lost my stripes once over this!

At our site (a green painted 300 ft. Tower with four 60' dishes), we were the radio relay link between Munich, Stutgart, Ausberg, and Nuremberg carrying 600 ch of traffic for the military and NATO. There was a Station Chief (Sgt E8) supply sgt (E7) and three trick chiefs) ( Spec5), one for each of three days, and 12 lower ranking enlisted men mostly E3's and 4's that had come from tech school.(that's how I started).

Each trick, or shift was on for 24 hours.and consisted of a trick chief and 3 techs.Starting with logging all the radio's meter readings, maintance, repairs and then military stuff. Cutting the grass in the summer, plowing the parking area under the tower in the winter, cleaning the building, windows ect (AND MAINTAINING THOSE WORTHLESS GENERATORS ! ) was a tricks duty. The station chief and supply Sgt. went home to military housing in Munich at the end of the working day while we fixed our supper, watched supplied movies, or watched Bonanza in German trying to guess what "Hoses was saying to Little Joe or Pa" (it was really comical, and more than a little rude as we were all in our early 20's.

One weekend I was staying in Munich in gov. housing with another trick chief who had brought his wife over and qualified for an apartment, and commuted to the station on his duty days. In the middle of the night his refrigerator cut off,and (there might have been a few beers and a couple of hands of double pinochle involved)in the sudden silence I bolted out of bed in my shorts and was halfway out of his apartment before it dawned on me there was no generators to start!

I guess it's the Pavlov thing

BK sends

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