1962 - 2008

 

I have worked all my life as an electronic technician, engineer,and later a manager of communications sytems. I started out by joining the US Army Alaska Communications System (ACS) in 1959 and went to Basic Training in Fort Ord, CA, then on to Ft Monmouth, NJ for "Fixed Plant Carrier Comminication" training. That was my first introdution to single sideband suppressed carrier (SSB) which operated in multiple carrier channels called multiplexing. This was my foundation for a later career in microwave communications systems. In 1960 I was sent to Juneau, Alaska, to a submarine cable repeater station north of town called Lena Point. After all the military schooling, my new position would be with non-military western electric gear. In 1961, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System came to Alaska, and at our station they installed lots of microwave equipment for the "BMEWS" links. I cut my teeth on Lenkurt 71F2 and 74S and Western Electric TD-2 microwave. The voice multiplex was WECO "L" carrier and we had some Radio Engineering Lab (REL) 75 Mhz with 12 channels of 45BX riding on an FAA system that we maintained. So that was the start of my technician career. If you have a similar background, I would enjoy hearing from you.

After the service, I landed a job in Seattle with the Washington State Patrol as a technician working on two way FM, Traffic RADAR, and microwave systems used in law enforcement. It was a great job but I got dissenchanted with all of the travel and installation work. I quit, and in 1967 went to work for the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) in North Central Washington. It was the first 24/7 "Earth Station" in the United States at the time. Part of that job was during Apollo VIII's first trip to the moon and COMSAT carried the live TV broadcasts from the moon via a NASA ship in the Pacific Ocean. It was through our station that the first TV images from the moon were viewed. I was the crew supervisor on shift during that event and coordinated the activity from the control room console. At the time of the first broadcast of live images from the moon, I was the one who coordinated the Television circuit from Brewster the the entire worldwide TV network. I remember vividly, New York would not except the test pattern signal and I told him that was fine, but I needed his name for the log. He accepted the signal and it went on over the Atlantic to Europe. It was a memorable experience.

I went back to the State in 1969 and continued until my retirement in 1991. I maintained all of southwest Washington for a number of years, then moved to Olympia, Washington. I maintained all of the microwave communications for South Western Washington for a number of years too.I am proud to have been part of building the largest law enforcement microwave sytem in the United States. I learned all I could about microwave path engineering and system management. It was a fantastic job and about eight years before retiring, I was made a manager and assistant commander of the Electronic Services Section. I had an opertunity on two occasions to work with the White House Communications staff during presidantial visits.

After retiring I went to work for Raytheon who was under contract with the FAA to do airway facility installation throughout the country. One of my accomplishments was to supervise the building of eight mobile air traffic control towers, and ultimately, traveling around the U.S. to train FAA crews in their deployment. One of my jobs for Raytheon was the installation of all communications equipment in the new Portland Air Traffic Control Tower. Ultinetly I was tasked to supervise all of the electronic installations that Raytheon was doing for the FAA. I had about 60 people working for me.

In 2000 I took my last job before permanent retirement, with the Department of Transportation as an Electronic Design Engineer for Microwave systems. I had to really get up to speed with the new digital technology and ethernet networks. The best part was using the new software tools which took a lot of the tedious work out of microwave path performance calculations. A program called "Pathloss" is great for engineering digital paths. I learned a lot about AutoCad drawing software, which we used to make system drawings and many radio site detail views used for installation. Part of my designs were used in my old employers, ( Washington State Patrol) new digital microwave system.

I retired permanently in 2008 and enjoy travel with my XYL.

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