Looking down the road.
Fall wasn’t that long ago but it sure seems it. Looking ahead but still glancing in the mirror. Knowing where you’ve been is almost as important as to where your going.
More to come…
personal history
1950’s Technology and the standing of watch
Shown below Is a LORAN “A” timer. It is the main controls for monitoring the radio signal of a now long obsolete and discontinued aid to navigation.
It all starts with a stable 100KHZ sine wave which gets multiplied, amplified and then synchronized with a master primary station. Loran stations operates in groups of three with one master primary and two slave secondary stations. A boat on the ocean would receive signals from all three and by means of triangulation determine the boats location on the high seas usually within a half a mile. Not bad for the time.
The electrical drawer on the right, third from the bottom housed the crystal oscillator oven, yes, radio crystals, used since the 1920’s That made standing watches a lot more intense because the crystal had to be maintained at exactly the correct temperature to ensure a steady 100KHZ frequency.
The 100KHZ base frequency was where it all started. If the Frequency drifted the signal synchronization was lost and alarms would sound and the deviations would be recorded on the chart recorder shown on the left. One would have to practically stand his entire watch in front of those oscilloscopes with your right hand on the dial regulating the temperature of the oven that housed the crystal oscillator
But when I was there we had some state of the art 1970’s technology. To the right is a cesium oscillator. This unit was able to maintain a steady 100KHZ sine wave with no drifting at all. Which made the system more reliable. Which made watches much more relaxed.
This is another one of my station mates. His name is Sid W. As you can see quite a bookworm. This is where we spent most of our time on watch. A multiband radio, transmitter, and though not shown a teletype machine which we used for messaging other loran stations and communicating with headquarters. When sending you would type out the message on a paper strip by punching holes in it. This is what texting was in the seventies.
On the wall behind Sid are the alarm boxes, all green. Through the opening you can see the transmitter and the power amplifier to the left. These things were huge, 1 megawatt of pulsed power we put out. the metal unit closest was the switch unit. All the equipment had backup, one on-air, one stand-by. Current, voltage, ant Watts readings were taken and recorded every hour. routine maintenance and good troubleshoot skills a must.
It was good duty, especially if you were on the 11am to 7pm watch. enough spare time to read, think, make phone calls to home
In Summer it never gets dark, at 3:30 am it’s as bright as noon. And your the only one awake. In winter, darkness 20 hours a day or should I say night.
Of course staying awake while on watch is a prerequisite. NO DOZ and coffee were always available. On rare occasions a ‘crossroad’.
A year in Kodiak Alaska. I had more fun then was legally allowed.
It was a long time ago. But such a good time.
A visit to the Big Apple’s rotten core 1972
A short time prior to my graduation from boot camp I learned that my request to attend ET (electronic technician) school had been approved. That training school along with several others was located on Governors Island. A 172 acre island with a rich history dating back to colonial times located 800 yards off the southern tip of Manhattan where the East and Hudson rivers flow into New York Harbor. It had become the largest Coast Guard base in the country in 1966 and would remain so until 1996 went the Coast Guard moved and was turned over to the City of New York. A very good description of the island can be seen here. http://www.andrewcusack.com/2005/governors-island/
After a brief stay at home I boarded a bus for NYC. This would be my first experience of the “Big Apple” . I Arrived at Port Authority bus terminal and looking at my map I had to walk to Times Square and get on the Red line Subway that would take me to South Ferry. Well as some may remember Times Square then, the “crossroads of the world” was located on the corner of Sodom St. and Gomorrah Ave. It was like this.
I made it to the subway and headed to South Ferry I arrived on the Island, a bucolic oasis surrounded by the polluted waters of New York harbor My education would start soon, technical and social. I would make several close friends. It was an exciting time.
High times in the military (67-75) A Preface
From Wikipedia:
On 25 May 1981, a Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler assigned to Carrier Air Wing 8 (CVW-8) crashed on the flight deck, killing 14 crewmen and injuring 45 others.[7] The Prowler was fuel-critical after a “bolter” (missed approach), and its crash and the subsequent fire and explosions destroyed or damaged eleven other aircraft.[8] Despite having no connection to the accident, the media focused on the autopsy results of several members of the Nimitz‘s enlisted flight deck crew who were killed, who tested positive for marijuana. As a result, President Ronald Reagan instituted a “Zero Tolerance” drug policy across all of the U.S. armed services, which started the mandatory drug testing of all U.S. military personnel.[9]
Thus ended an era which likely began sometime in the mid. sixties when our solders fighting in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam discovered that Thai sticks and black hash made their down time more enjoyable then Budweiser and Lucky Strikes. At the same time the other children of the “greatest generation” who were listening to Bob Dylan and Jefferson Airplane and going to music festivals like “Woodstock” discovered that weed didn’t turn them into drooling psychopaths like in Reefer Madness.
And then there was the draft, and can you imagine that if all one needed to avoid it was to have some THC in your system. They wouldn’t get hardly anyone. You wouldn’t have to pretend to be a faggot gay person or have to lie about being a “conscientious objector” or being the sole support of your aged mother or anything.
But even those guys who joined willingly for various personal reasons were not going to stop using what they enjoyed, despite some pretty sever consequences if you were caught. If you didn’t know where to get it you always knew someone who did or they knew someone. Of course not everyone did drugs, but even those who didn’t indulge were tolerant of it. Of course you didn’t want to be a “squealer”. You would be fortunate if you were simply “shunned” by your shipmates. Worse things could and did happen.
What used to be the standard military vices, booze, tobacco and caffeine gave way to pot, speed, hallucinogens, and then booze, tobacco, and caffeine.
Yes it was a strange era back then. But not nearly as bad as the insanity today.
Rock Concerts
Driving South down I-89 Sunday A peculiar thought occur to me. How many rock concerts have I attended in my lifetime? I won’t include all the excellent bar bands, with one exception. Lets see.
When I was in high school my friends and I saw at the field house in Dartmouth…The Association…Spanky and our Gang…Sly and the Family Stone.
When I was stationed in Hawaii I saw Lydia Pence and Cold Blood. We almost saw Brownsville station play. In fact they were in the Hotel room across the hall from us at he Holiday Inn on Waikiki Beach. There’s a long story about this trip to tell.
My youngest brother say we went to a Frank Zappa concert at Dartmouth. I’ll take his word for it. I know that I saw the group Boston.
Got to see the Pousette- Dart band at a Bar in Killington in 1977.
The Wife and I saw The Moody Blues one July night in the 1990’s in Stowe. It was so cold it was spitting snow.
I remember going to the Montreal Forum to a concert but for the life of me I can’t remember who I saw. Oh well…