11th CAMs

[mhuf]

Wandering if anyone from the 11th CAMS at McClellan is on this site? I was stationed there 73 to 76. We worked WC (55th Weather) and HC (41st ARRS). We had lots of good times there. The aircraft that is parked at the front gate of Little Rock sat on the ramp at McClellan for lots of months along with its sister ship that also escaped. It didn\'t look anything like it does now.

[gmat]

I was in the MET/ARE shop in the 11th CAMS from 83/84. Worked on WC-135Bs. Nice group of guys there.

Grant

[bobdaley]

AWRA group on Yahoo haas a lot of McClellan folks

Bob

[tgeorge]

I was in the MET/ARE shop in the 11th CAMS from 83/84. Worked on WC-135Bs. Nice group of guys there.

Grant

I was one of the first troops to form MET/ARE in 1967. And Grant I may have taught you MET/ARE at Chanute because I was its only Instructor 1975 to 1980.

tgeorge

[gmat]

Tgeorge,

Yes, I think that I remember your name. Sorry, but I remember Bruce Kibbens' name better, but I remember what you look like. I hope that you are fine and well.

I was in the first class with the two Cindies, Lou Ames, Pete Osborne (the flower child) and Kevin Cross. Kevin got his pilot's wings while at Chanute and later became an officer. Lou and I served together at Keesler and next at Hanscom. He cross trained or got out there. Pete left after Keesler. The two Cindies got married, and while Cindy Needham stayed in for a while, the other Cindy got out quickly.

As you can guess, my hobby got me into trouble. I try to keep my nose clean.

I don't take pictures of aircraft now, but stioll build models. Or rather buy kits and start them. Most of my slides are in Hawaii, otherwise, I would post more photos of C-130s.

I now teach English to kids in Tokyo. I've built a couple of kits with my students. I've been married to a fine Japanese lady since 1987. I've been lucky that way.

I'm sorry, but in spite of your best efforts, I was never swift nor fully comfortable with electronics. I asked TSgt Galloway to show me how to tune the APN-42 many, many times, until I wore him out and he finally said that that was too much already. What he didn't know was that I worried that I didn't intuitively know the system or would forget it, so I practiced until I felt more confident. Skip Van Pelt was the night supervisor and he had to be entertained by one or more of the troops playing chess or Pinoccle with him. I would volunteer to go out with the Reserve troops, because I loved airplanes, and ended up learning a bit more from them. It kind of came out OK because one night, QC came to inspect us and asked us to pull out an APN-42 set and calibrate it. We took out the T.O. with its uncertain instructions and proceeded to calibrate it. It went fine until we got to the part where you set up the amplitude signal. Pete, who knew electronics better than I ever will, said that I should set the signal differently. Well, I had been doing it that way with Frank, who knew more than either of us. So here we are having a disagreement in front of QC. The QC guy must have taken pity on us as he looked at the sigmal and said that it was below specs and that the radar unit failed check out. So we put it away and that ended it. He didn't fail us, buit he later had some words with O'Leary, who had some words with us. But I guess he knew that I was trying hard, as he didn't reprimand us. After the QC guy had left, I took the unit out and calibrated it again. Proves the saying about too many cooks...

When I get more memory for my computer, I'll scan more articles about weather related aircraft. Need to get a slide converter to scan what few slides I have here in Japan.

Best wishes,

Grant