Text 621, 107 rader
Skriven 2013-10-25 10:51:48 av Mike Luther (1:117/100.0)
    Kommentar till text 618 av Ed Vance (12296.windowsa)
Ärende: Re: SK
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 EV> 10-20-13 09:42 Mike Luther wrote to Ed Vance about Re: SK

 Interesting Ed ..

 EV> Thanks for the WWII USS Midway story Dick Harris told to you.

 EV> I guess your Rating was a AT (Aviation Technician).
 EV> I saw a AT in 1960 at NOB Norfolk (Naval Operations Base, Norfolk)
 EV> when I was using the Base Gym.

Perhaps a bit more interesting also, chortle!  No such rating AT at all!  It's
been of discussion elsewhere before, but my shipboard and 'Navy' experience is
a bit unusual, so sail.  I got my US ham radio license first back in 1952 when
I was 13 years of age.  My only interest at all in it was telegraph code. Was
at that time the youngest ever to next get the US Extra Class license. So said
back then I wound up doing original wire harness construction for the first
weather radars ever released in the USA from alteration of the original WWII
radar systems, working as a kid in A&M Consolidated High School here in College
Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M College.  Moved on to so said build the first
ever Color Radar designed by one of my mentors, Dr. George Huebner who was
W5GDK.  That moved to helping build the first Sferics weather radar system he
designed here also.  This all associated with the Oceanography and Meteorogy
Department of Texas A&M.

Gets lots bigger experience wise but this part focuses on that the largest
money contributor back in the 1950's for the Texas A&M Oceanography Department
Research Vessel Hidalgo, a converted WWII Depth Charger, was actually the USA
weather research operation studying hurricane forecasting. Actually, the first
ever hurricane hunter plane flight into a storm was a $10 USD bet between an
Air Force Instructor out at the A&M Space Technology site and his student in a
T33 Jet trainer!  The instructor joked that the T33 and the kid were even good
enough to fly out over a Gulf of Mexico hurricane and dive into it, survive and
return alive!  The kid was so scared, the instructor bet him if they got back
he'd pay him a $10 bill!  If not the kid would owe the instructor a $10 bill! 
They zoomed off 'no flight plan' into the gulf that day, dove into the storm,
climbed back out and returned!  $10 paid! Anyway ..

The weather research crew in the USA made a deal with A&M that all during the
hurricane season out in the Gulf of Mexico, they would pay major money for the
Hidalgo operations but *ONLY* if what the 'assigned' weather observer on the
Hidalgo who had to do the balloon release, pressure readings and so on was
ABSOLUTELY able to get the HOURLY found data back to the USA 24 hours a day
seven days a week for every day that the Hidalgo was out at sea.  There was no
satellite stuff or anything like that back then.  Only marine radio telegraph
code stuff.  Well as a kid I already had a First Class Telephone FCC Enineer's
license and a Radar Endorsement.  So my department 'boss' asked me if I would
go down and take an FCC Telegraph Operator's license?  I agreed to go to
Houston and do it.  Passed the 'normal' Second Class test no problem.  OK,
Mike, you are now the Marine Radiotelegraph Operator for the RV Hidalgo.

'During the hurricane season, your job (Paying my way through Texas A&M) is to
be able EVERY HOUR WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF THE HOUR - 24 HOURS A DAY WHILE THE
HIDALGO IS AT SEA - TO HAVE THE RESEARCH DATA BACK ON SHORE AT SOME USA
TELEGRAPH LAND STATION.  And with that and your other engineering work you do
for the department we'll pay you $24,000 USD a year.'

Well married with kids and all and no way to ever any other way earn a college
degree, I accepted.  And for as much as two weeks at a time months on end
during hurricane season I never had more than about 45 minutes of sleep ever at
a time between ports of call we were at.  After the first year at this, it was
'suggested' that I should go down and take my First Class Telegraph Operator
License upgrade.  So said you had to have at least six months service on a US
military vessel to even take that exam for what that level license authorized
you to be.  OK I had that.  But when I passed the exam in Houston they
wouldn't, as normal, issue me the license!  I asked, "Why?"  They said I had to
send proof of my birth certificate and family information to Washington, where
my license would be authorized.  Duhh?

I did it.  Got one of what I found out are VERY few ever issued First Class
Telegraph Operator Licenses ever issues.  I could have served as the operator
on the Titanic, so I learned at the time, but was told I was lucky not to have
been on it.  It was a number of years later, after I finally figured out how to
get me off the Hidalgo and to create the first long distance seismic operations
ever over the ocean by transfering all of the data on all this to the original
Collins SSB HF shortwave systems that were the original stuff on the B52's,
that I learned more about all this.  At that time, back in the 1970's there
were two US Government issued licenses, that if you had either one of them, you
were subject to call by the President of the United States for continued
military service for the rest of your life on 24 hours notice!

Huhh?  I was classified as 4D during all of this!

I had both of them!  The First Class Telegraph Operator License and the
aviation Instrument Flight Instructor License, which I had as the Chief Flight
Instructor at Easterwood Airport here at Texas A&M University during most of
Vietnam.  As that person, for the contractor who taught all the Aggies here in
the Corps of Cadets. I rode with over 1500 Texas Aggies that served in Vietnam.
 Though, in theory, how could I have 'served' that six months aboard a US
vessel and not been in the Navy?  And that I never even knew that though my
parents never paid a dime toward any of my education at Texas A&M even as a
graduate student, they were paying me even more for this stuff in the 1960's
than they even were paying my Dad as a professor at A&M! Even at the time he
retired as head of the Mathematics Department here in 1974!  And I assure you
for both my beloved Dad and myself, the technical stuff each of us, as well as
the others of my family, have done to try and carry all us humans upward in
life, without lying, cheating and stealing from the unknowing, goes WAY beyond
what is said in this tidbit to you Ed.

Plus you'be surprised at what even FidoNet has been worth to all of us in the
world as well.


Mike Luther as N117C at 1:117/100


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