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USAF Comm Ground Radio or Satcom

H

hank_612

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
Dec 3, 2011
80
4
18
Stl Mo
I was a USAF Ground Radio(2e173) from 1998-2004. I was just wondering how many other hams here were Ground Radio or Satcom troops at one time or another. I think it would be cool to swap stories or see if we deployed together that kinda stuff.


Steve Baker
W2SRB
 

I pissed off a portable Satcom operator in Honduras once. I had just exited a Chinook and walked up to a couple dudes sitting on the ground and struck up a conversation.

I reached down and picked up a funny looking contraption on the ground to look at. Dude started yelling, found out it was an antenna that was aimed at a satellite. Never seen one before, but know what they are now.

Later on, the dudes let us call home on it. They contacted Wright Patterson AFB who patched us into the landline.

Pretty cool stuff, except for the echo.

This was the early 80's and I was only familiar with regular HF/VHF stuff.
 
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I wasnt Satcomm or Ground radio, But I worked Electronic Warfare Advanced Programs Division. Not radio but RF still the same. Its amazing what 20megawatt cw illuminator on a Russian Sam site is capable of!!! Birds did not like us!! haha
 
Wow I cant believe we didn't get more responses. I figured there would be a bunch of hams who got there start in the USAF.
 
m42duster said:
Most are from Army and Marines and a smidgen Navy.

Air Force by nature don't have near the ops as the other branches.
Click to expand...

No offense, But you couldnt be more wrong. USAF has more specialties to support combat operations than any other branch.
 
They may have more specialties, but not more squad, company, battalion, brigade and division radio ops.

There are more radio ops in the other branches than the USAF.
 
When I was in the USAF 98-04 my primary function was providing maintenance/install support to the Customs service and Army. I spent most of my time at embassy's(marines equip) customs sites(airports) and in the field with the army. I worked on lst 5's on air force one and a Satcom terminal on a navy frigate.
The USAF has the largest best trained radio maintenance folks in all of DOD. That being said the other branches had a ton more operators. The operators I encounters were ill equipped to become Hams. Most knew no electronic or Antenna theory. Few if any could read a schematic. In my experience there training was limited to the phonetic alphabet and some radio etiquette. But I agree there where exponentially more of them.
 
hank_612 said:
When I was in the USAF 98-04 my primary function was providing maintenance/install support to the Customs service and Army. I spent most of my time at embassy's(marines equip) customs sites(airports) and in the field with the army. I worked on lst 5's on air force one and a Satcom terminal on a navy frigate.
The USAF has the largest best trained radio maintenance folks in all of DOD. That being said the other branches had a ton more operators. The operators I encounters were ill equipped to become Hams. Most knew no electronic or Antenna theory. Few if any could read a schematic. In my experience there training was limited to the phonetic alphabet and some radio etiquette. But I agree there where exponentially more of them.
Click to expand...


Had you enlisted before the mid 80's, you would have met some very fine operators. It's a whole new environment with SATCOM.
 

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