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Retirement Briefing


TSgtRet
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Reading things on here has prompted a memory or 3. Just before I retired in 92 I was told I was going to get a briefing, it was outlined like this:

You will go to the base commanders office, upon arrival you will be greeted by an E8 admin type, his/her name tag reads "T H E Y" at this point you find out who was giving out all that misinformation over the years (They said this...).

Next you will greeted by a SSgt in an OMS/AGS hat.....yes you finally met "the regular crew chief".

Finally you are taken in to the base commanders office, whereupon he draws back a large curtain revealing a wall sized mural.....he turns to you and says:"This is the BIG PICTURE!"

At this point they hand you your retirement orders and send you on your way.

I'm sure there were lots of versions and variations.

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Any Keesler Triangle Alumni remember:

Hurricane Watch

7/16 Bay Cutter (there was also an adjustable version)

The wooden box around the buffer cord that contained the (wait for it) "Buffer Amplifier"

Building a "Pinger Detector"

"Biloxi Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Violet Gives Willingly" for resistor color bands

The giant PSM 6 in B.E.D.

And, yes, the brass magnets, 50 ft of flightline, buckets of vacuum and prop wash, etc

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Yea 68-69, Gary's cruder version is the resistor color code that got burned into my memory at Alley Hall. And how about those colossal vacuum tube o'scopes most of us saw our very first lissajous waves on?

You know, I returned to Dolan Hall in 85 or 86 for a Delco factory course on their Carousel INS. You know those concrete stairs to the second floor had big worn divits from all of the thousands and thousands of airmen that had climbed them. If you didn't stay in the foot holes you could easily get tripped up. Oh they were throwing another layer of tar on the flat roof though. Fumed us out of class one day. The old WWII open bay barrack (3478th sqdn) I spent 10 months of 1969 in was a basketball court behind the new Muse Manor in 1985.

I can still smell the Magnolia brushes....or maybe that was back bay swamp gas.

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I was at Lowry rather than Keesler, but much of the same stuff.

Didn't any of you pointy-heads ever have to look up a part number for a "Fallopian tube"?

Or maintaining the early digital computers, didn't you ever have to clean out the bit bucket?

John

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You might not believe this but "bit buckets" actually exisited and I cleaned them out regularly.

While an ART in the Dover AFB Computer Shop, I worked the C-5's Inertial Doppler Nav Equip (IDNE) System in-shop. Each Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) had to have a data tape with it's own particular instrument constants for gyro biasing, platform drift rates, etc. This data stayed with the IMU and was loaded into the Nav Computers on the aircraft when installed. The data tape was ten foot or so and was punched on a mylar (metallic) tape. Each whole represented a bit of data. Well, all of the punched bits collected in the test station's "bit bucket" which regularly required cleaning. Word of advice, never get the bits on you cause they're a bit-h to get off.

I was TDY to Lowry in the early/mid 90's for a two month school on the F-16's AIS Computer/Inertial Test Station. Loved the Base and Denver.

Edited by INS/Dopplertroop
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Yeah forgot about the "gold or silver".

I remember the giant Lavoie (?) O Scopes.

We had an instructor early in B.E.D. that left charged capacitors on his table...the leads were bent in such a way.....well you get it:eek:

I remember moving from the un-airconditioned to airconditioned dorms on the triangle (that's when they added the "kick out" panel in the room windows).

I also remember in "SETS" (Dolan Hall) being told "you'll never see any of this once you get out in the field". They were refering to: APN 59, ARN 6, ARN 14, ARN 21, APX 64, APN 70 and SCR 718. Do you think they were just misinformed? ;)

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The instructors who claimed we wouldn't see what we were taught were mostly the A1C's who went straight from tech school to Academic Instructors School. Some never saw the field. Other Buck Sgts were only in the field a short time. Regardless, it was valuable stuff because WAPS SKT Tests were written from the Tech School course material.

Yeah, they just loved shocking newbies with that capacitor. They'd probably get Article 15's for that today. Not PC. Safety first and all.

Edited by INS/Dopplertroop
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