NATTC Memphis tour of duty not once, but twice.
Hello Shipmates. I attended AFUNP school and aviation electronics A school after San Diego boot camp the summer of 1970. I recall the thousands of sailors and marines there and settling into a routine of duty and school. It was odd as I didn't ask for this schooling, but somehow ended up in aviation and electronics. I soon found my niche, and I guess the Navy somehow knew my destiny. I enjoyed the challenge and the less restrictive life at NATTC. I still recall that getting off base…
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Looks like you left a lot of bodies on the roadside. That's a lot of exclusion alright! What I was saying was for the time, the avionics courses were very complete, and made a decent foundation for a technical career. Most of the technicians I've met can only relate to a computer that mentions Microsoft while booting. Point and click guys that have memorized some acronyms with no understanding of the underlying principles, like the A+ cert.
As for me, I haven't done aircraft work at all. As a hobby, I've flown a lot of sims over the years, but was in with the black shoes as soon as I left Memphis for Great Lakes. But you do EVTs now? That sounds really interesting. Maybe when I get too old to do pharmacy service with the weird hours and 24/7 on-call, I'll look into that.
Only the EPCC's BITE was good, because without power, you didn't have anything. It usually wouldn't tell you anything, you had to time it. You went off elapsed time to guess what was going on. The self test in the signal conditioners was amusing, but it used only parts of the circuit path where the EPCC actually rerouted the signals onto a redundant circuit during the test. That's what was impressive.
I guess I'm intrigued talking with you, because all of the techs I've worked with since seem somewhat useless. Navy Air training must have been awesome by comparison. AND I could have been on a more identical path with you as well. When I signed up, there was a gaurantee I'd get one of four ratings, TD wasn't guaranteed. I could have been an AT, AX, or AQ. But the similarities in everything is just eerie, prior radio experience, automotive interests, etc.
Was EVERYONE have these interests back then? I dunno, but if so, I hope to find more of our old mates on here sooner or later. I remember that High Voltage place too, a friend at the time bought a guitar there for an enormous amount of money, financed on allotment forever. But an airman Peters got jumped outside the gate and was beaten badly. Stuff did happen, because locals know the sailors had money.
I got into a little trouble a couple times, but the Navy always seemed to bury it. But one time I went on leave, and extended the leave through Friday. When I went to work Monday, they charged me with UA! It was a bookkeeping error, but I got fined, restricted a couple weeks, and it extended my EAOS 2 days. Weird, huh?
On the electric plant control console, Litton designed the best BITE system I have ever seen to date (built in test equipment). It performed a test that lasted 3 minutes. It also used boolean logic tables to determine what outputs should be. Everybody else hated it.
On the propulsion side of things, the Destroyer CCS consoles had signal conditioner bays with various cards. I arrived onsite as an airman and moved from coffee duty to respected team member in less than a week. I went to work on the computer initiated BITE for the signal conditioners. When I was done, I went and got a 1st class and showed him the bay of cards alternately blinking merrily like a Christmas tree. He freaked, and asked what the hell? Did you screw it up? I said "No, it's supposed to do that.".
This site is outstanding, as are you! Spaghetti lab referred to breadboarding all of the circuits in the Comtran, which was a big console with the binary registers displayed in lights. We made adders, ring counters, registers, and basically all of the individual circuits that made up a computer. We programmed it with a book and pushing buttons to enter the programs into memory. I don't actually remember jumpers on it. I saw one for sale at Great Lakes, but didn't buy it. Instead I bought a slick computer desk/cabinet that I still use to this day. It has a roll up lockable front, a pull out keyboard with a flip to the side table piece for a mouse.
I was a geek too, in high school I held an FCC operator's license and worked in radio stations. My TRS 80 was model "Level 1" and did not interface with a TV at all, was black and white only, and did have the cassette storage. I wrote a few programs on it, including a few card games. Other word games were available, I used to play Pyramid a lot. Then in '83 I bought the Apple clone "Franklin" and wrote assembly language programs. I was a Rockwell 6502 Master. I wrote a program to analyze and tweak the floppy drives using the joystick. Left to right would read sectors, and back to forward would step through the tracks. You could calibrate the floppys to different parameters so that you could copy "Flight Simulator" and other copy protected games of the day using Copy II Plus. There was a CPM card installed that ran a Z80 under CP/M, it was like two computers in one. Ahhh the memories, no pun intended. I'll find my old photo to add soon, it was taken at NATTC. This site is great!
In '81, there were no PCs yet, save the TRS 80 (which I owned). So there was very little civilian education regarding computers back then anywhere else.
The school had a computer called the COMTRAN 10, which was a bunch of registers represented by lights. It was actually kinda cool, like the old Lost In Space episodes. In TD A, they actually had aircraft simulators to practice on. The cockpits were blacked out with canvas, there were no graphics. They had plotters and stuff, but no matter where and how you tried to land, it was DANGEROUS! The yoke would go erratic and ya better let go!
I felt a bit cheated on the Crow, I had gone through C schools that other guys got their crows for, but not me. But like you, I was proud not to have went the rent-a-crow route. I collected up the complete set of books from school and kept them for quite a few years, until the wife MADE me get rid of them. I could ring her neck!
I always wondered what AFTA was about. As for the reason the Navy gave for disbanding the TDs, they said they wanted all electronics talent recruited to be aboard ships.
When I had the GTO, I had many electrical and mechanical problems to resolve. The turn signal switches were both bad, and had to rip into the steering column. Since I couldn't finish the job until I got more parts, I didn't want to cinch the steering wheel back on real tight. Before the parts came, I was driving along and had the wheel come off, just like in the old comedys! A not so funny event was when I was sold a starter with a bad solenoid. After installing the starter and driving off, it turned into a generator and cooked my harness. But most of my repairs were stable, and I kept the car for many years after. One guy in my division was there one day, and he broke a brake line. I pitched in to help, because he was going to crimp it closed with a vise grip and drive it that way. That led to quite a few volunteer jobs at the shop.
I can't believe how similar our personaliies were. I now have a '67 Camaro, and matching white Y2K Corvette and Trans Am. I've B&Med about Toyota and Datsun owners from the day I first saw them. Bless you, James.
Yes, the loafers and pullover describes what I was doing. My position went from dungarees to business casual in '85. I was in with the black shoes at Great Lakes, working out of GSE C school. We had simulators all over the base, ET school, FC, etc. We even took on the new Firefighting simulator (we had fuel oil fires in basic) that was mandated by the EPA due to the billows of smoke emitted during each class. There was even an elevator simulator that went up and down about 10 feet, simulating 2 floors. I spent most of my time in GSE school, but hung around mostly with the GSM staff. We had full console setups for operations training for officers and repair for enlisted GSE techs. It was exhaustive troubleshooting experience, because the GSE techs were supposed to use their O scope probes on the backplanes, which caused loads of problems. Senior Chiefs would come around asking me particulars about their gear. The 20H5 was featured in TV Guide in a recruiting ad. One reason TDs got great walk-ons is because they were trained in civilian computers and interfaces.
I was practically famous at the on-base auto shop because of my '65 GTO and alll the my friends would bring me challenges! I transitioned into Ford Aerospace (then Loral, then Lockheed), and became a supervisor, advanced twice in two years.
BUT... during my service there was always an extra price to pay. During AV A, we had to do PT on the Marines' schedule. To be a wise guy, I used to wear my boondockers while doing the run. When I got to Great Lakes, I always PNA'ed for E-4, because there were no billets because the rating was dying. Eventually, I stopped taking the advancement exams. BTW, there is no option for Airman in the profile section.
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