Technical Careers

 
It was my twenty-first birthday and I was having a milk shake at Frosty Freddy's at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. It wasn't the way most twenty-one-year-olds celebrate their birthday but I was a new recruit in the U.S. Air Force.

There were several reasons for enlisting. First, I was out of work. I had quit my job at the Cincinnati Library for better pay at Alber's Supermarket and then I was laid off. The draft was breathing down my neck and I was keen on becoming an electronic engineer. And the Air Force was advertising an Enlist and Train With Your Buddy Program. The Air Force training, education, and the G.I. benefits would eventually all pay off but the two friends I enlisted with, well I never saw them in Basic Training or ever again.

The military pay for enlisted personnel was $60 a month and Boot Camp was everything you've ever heard about it or seen in the movies. There was marching, a loud, vulgar, in-your-face drill instructor, more marching, the deafening pop-pop-pop at the firing range, navigating water hazards, climbing up ropes and repelling off of cliffs, more marching, crawling through mud and under barbwire, cleaning the barracks and more marching.

Even so, I was having a good birthday. We had been given a squadron pass that gave us the freedom to go anywhere within our squadron area. Even though that was quite restrictive, it was great to have a little time off after two weeks of nothing but strict regimen and training

After the 6 weeks of basic training I was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi where I would receive training in the field of Electronic Countermeasures (ECM). I was anxious to get started with some formal education in electronics but it would be a couple of months before my classes actually started. Most of my squadron spent the time raking sand, picking up cigarette butts, mowing grass, painting rocks or peeling potatoes. Fortunately for me, they needed a volunteer to work in the Base Library. My experience at the Cincinnati Public Library got me the job. The library was great duty. The building was clean and air conditioned.

Typical of the average library, all the books were in order by Dewey Decimal number. But I noticed that a lot of the foreign students training at Biloxi had trouble finding books on specific subjects. I suggested to the librarian that I might be easier for them if the library was organized by departments like the Cincinnati library where I had worked. I explained the system to her and she agreed it might be a good ideaa.

The librarian and her husband were going on vacation and she gave me permission to make the changes while she was gone. I felt honored to be so trusted and I rearranged the library into departments; History, Business, Science, Arts, etc. When she returned she was so impressed that she invited several of the Base officials to see the new library. Her husband, a colonel, liked it so much he wanted me to abandon my dream of electronics school promising me a great career in the military. Perhaps I should have listened. One never knows.

When school finally started, I was learning basic electronics but it was not much more than what I had learned to get my Ham Radio license. The equipment, however, involved powerful transmitters that generated "white noise" in the radar frequencies. These "S" and "X" band transmitters were used to protect aircraft from radar detection and guided missiles. Both bands used simitar antennas (possibly a "shark-fin" antenna on today's automobiles). The ultra-high frequency "X" band signal (8-12 GHz) went from the transmitter to the antenna through waveguide instead of a cable.

There was a rumor in school that the Air Force sometimes took a top graduate from one of the classes to teach in Biloxi. I liked Biloxi with its sunny beaches and night clubs so I studied very hard and finished with a grade of 98 out of 100 hoping to get assigned as a teacher in Biloxi. But, no one in my class stayed in Biloxi and I was assigned to Plattsburgh AFB in northern New York about 60 miles south of the Canadian border.

Plattsburgh was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base and home of the 380th Bomb Wing. The base had B-47 bombers and a squadron of KC-97 refueling tankers. The B-47 was the world's first swept wing bomber. Out-rigger landing gear was necessary because of the thin wings. When a B-47 was loaded with bombs and two 1,700 gal. wing fuel pods, a JATO rack (Jet Assisted Takeoff) located behind the rear landing gear gave it the extra boost it needed to get airborne.

I handled ECM maintenance on the B-47s. There were five ECM transmitters on each airplane and they were controlled by the co-pilot. There were also two chaff dispensers, one on each side of the plane. Chaff are packets of tiny metal strips and little reels of metal "tape" that can be dumped in large quantities creating a "metallic cloud" to distract enemy radar and missiles from the aircraft. The metal tape could also fall across power lines on the ground creating short circuits and power outages.

The winters in Plattsburgh were wicked and I worked outside on the flight line where I learned all about snow measured in feet, not inches, and wind-chill factors. A chill factor of 5 was about 70° below zero! Exposed skin can freeze in one minute at that temperature. Twice in my years at Plattsburgh, we were called off the flightline because of a chill factor of 5. If you had a car you took your battery inside at night. If you left a 6-pack of beer in your car overnight you would find broken bottles in the morning. And you would be thankful for the ropes that were installed along the sidewalks to pull yourself along the walkways against the wind and blinding snow.

There were eight B47s on our base that were "always on alert." The alert planes were loaded with nuclear bombs, tail gun turrets, ammunition and wartime countermeasures. The pilot, co-pilot and navigator, who flew each of these B-47s remained stationed in an underground bunker. On October 16, 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. A U-2 flight provided proof that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had placed Soviet medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Our alert planes were immediately deployed. We scrambled to load nuclear weapons, install tail guns, ammunition, and wartime ECM on every flyable B-47 on our base.

We remained on alert through Thanksgiving that year while communications between the White House and the Kremlin kept the world hanging on the brink of a possible nuclear war. With no planes to fly and no planes to work on we spent our 12-hour shifts watching black and white WWII films narrated by Walter Cronkite. By November 20, 1962 Khrushchev had issued a statement that Soviet missiles would be dismantled and removed from Cuba and the Soviet IL–28 bombers would also be removed.

The United States ended its naval blockade and our bombers began returning to base. Two important results emerged from this crisis. A direct telephone link between the White House and the Kremlin was established that became known as the Red Phone and the two superpowers, Russia and the U.S., began to reconsider the nuclear arms race taking the first steps in agreeing to a nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

During the alert, I missed the fun nights I spent dancing at Brodie's Bar, the girl I had just started dating and the offer for a home-cooked Thanksgiving Day dinner with her parents. I never imagined that by the next November that girl would be my wife and by the November after that, I would be a "Dad."

Well, I never made Sergeant even though I had invented a device that cut our job time on the flight line in half. There was a Take-off Prority (TOP). A countermeasures transmitter was not working. I needed a new transmitter and while I was installing the new transmitter, the B-47 began taxiing to the runway. I hung my foot out of the back of the B-47 hoping the tower would see it a not let the plane take off. I was securing the last safety wire clamp when the planes engines reved up to take-off power. I droped down out of th well, closed and locked the access door, and ran off the runway through the jet blast as the plane roared down the runway.

The plane made the takeoff time for its training mission but ended up with bad countermeasures scores. In my haste to get out of the airplane, I had forgotten to turn the new transmitter ON! The base CO wanted to bust me to Airman 2nd Class. However, just two weeks prior, a plane had gotten bad countermeasures scores because the co-pilot had "forgotten to turn his jammers on." (The crews referred to our equipment as "jammers.") My commander saved my neck. He refused to bust me unless they busted that co-pilot. I was not busted but I didn't make Sergeant either.

 
When I joined the Air Force I was trained in ECM (Electronic Counter Measures). After training in Biloxi, I was off to Plattsburgh AFB, in upstate NY where I became an expert in B-47 ECM transmitters and systems. While stationed in Plattsburgh I was married and our first son was born. My wife insisted that after my enlistment we would return to civilian life. I mailed out resumes to electronic companies in NY and PA.

American Electronics Labs (AEL) in Lansdale, PA was one of the companies that answered my resume. AEL designs and manufactures ECM transmitters and radar-warning receiver systems and performs aircraft engineering and modification services for military and commercial aircraft as well as state-of-the-art antenna and integrated circuit components. My interview with them seemed like I hit the jackpot. The company had an Army contract to install ALT-7 S-band (2-4 GHz) transmitters into M-113 armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) for use in Vietnam. In the Air Force I was an expert on ALT-7 transmitters and could even rebuild these transmitters' magnetrons. No one at AEL had any idea how to even turn the transmitters on.

I was hired into the Systems Department and, after getting the transmitters in operation, my job was to test and trouble-shoot the entire system after all the equipment was installed and inter-connected in the tanks. At first there were only the tanks involved in the project. However, before this military contract even ended, the Army was learning that jamming radar signals was not as critical as the need for jamming communications against guerrilla and Liberation Army units in Vietnam.

Within the year there was a new contract with the Army. AEL had designed a compact state-of-the-art ECM system that could be installed on Jeeps for mobility. The system included receivers, transmitters, spectrum analyzers and a random Morse Code generator (that I helped design). The equipment was connected through a complex network of cables and installed in a "pod" that sat above the rear seats on the back of a Jeep. A telescoping antenna could be mounted on the front bumper and raised into position in a matter of minutes.

When everything was installed in the pod and mounted on the Jeep, it was a very impressive looking system. Especially when the trailer with a "jet engine" generator that powered the system was attached. The Army was very proud of their new system. When several NATO nations arranged a conference in Anzio, Italy to show off their best electronic war-time equipment, the US Army choose to demonstrate its new ECM system designed and manufactured by AEL. As a leading systems technician, I was selected to support the demonstration in Anzio. The system was complex and it would be necessary for me to take along enough test equipment to resolve any failure that might occur. I flew directly to Rome, Italy but the Jeep with its electronics, the trailer and generator went by ship to Florence, Italy. However, it was weeks before the equipment finally arrived in Florence and was driven to Anzio.

When the Jeep and trailer, with its jet engine generator, finally arrived at the Anzio Base, an immediate problem was discovered. The jet generator used "jet fuel" and the only place that had jet fuel was the Rome airport, an hour away. A group of soldiers was assigned to go to Rome for the fuel. The day of the domonstration, everything worked perfectly and the world was impressed. But the U.S. Army Lieutenant, who was in charge of our demonstration, was disappointed. He thought it would be funny to grill a hot dog or roast a marshmallow in the jet blast of our generator but his idea died when I could not find hot dogs and discovered it's impossible to describe a marshmallow.

The next year AEL had another new Army contract. This time it was to install ten of the "Jeep systems" in two airplanes; five systems in each airplane. The installation, testing and training took place near Phoenix, Arizona. Many problems arose ranging from operators getting air-sick to units shutting down when the airplanes banked to the left. My investigation into that problem showed me that the transmitters' were overheating and the overheat sensors were shutting them down. But the Boeing engineers argued that the overheat sensors were faulty and shutting the transmitters down because the plane was banking.

The five transmitters generated a lot of heat and Boeing had designed an exhaust channel with a powerful fan that exhausted the heat from the plane. After a week of testing, they discovered that, when the planes went into a bank, atmospheric pressure outside the airplane would block that exhaust. I was right. The transmitters were overheating and the sensors did their job. Boeing was not happy. They had to redesign their exhaust system. Imagine if they also had to get new tubes for all the transmitters.

The Army had hoped to send me to Vietnam for a year to continue the support and training. They offered to triple my salary and it would be tax free. Although I would have had the civilian rank equivalent to a Colonel, my wife warned me that if I accepted this job, she and the boys would not be there when I came home. Like any good father I chose my family and declined their offer. Meanwhile I had spent the past six years studying physics and electronic engineering at LaSalle College. Unfortunately, President Richard Nixon had decreed a national wage freeze and suspended all government contracts. My dream, sacrifices and hard work for a career in electronic engineering was looking very dim.

 
Seifert X-Ray sold and repaired industrial x-ray equipment and was a popular name in the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) industry. My position as service manager became an interim job after I had started a new career in business with S&S Associates.

Seifert X-ray and S&S Associates were neighbors in a tiny industrial park in King of Prussia, PA. The only other business in the park was a company that had something to do with "bar codes" but no one knew what bar codes were. I was the CEO of Service in Electronics, a subsidiary business of S&S Associates. We had the latest and greatest in office equipment like a Xerox copier and a FAX machine. Seifert was a small company with just two employees so they often came to our office to use our machines. Over the years, Seifert and S&S Associates developed a close relationship. The secretary at Seifert, Gina, was even a former S&S employee.

As a result of President Nixon's suspension of all government contracts, the S&S office in Bethesda, MD closed and the company officers from Bethesda moved into our King of Prussia office. When an unfortunate accident took the life of the owner of S&S, my mentor and my friend, his partners wasted no time in shutting down the entire business including Service in Electronics. And just that fast I had no job.

Deiter Market, CEO at Seifert X-ray, offered me a position as service manager. He could not match the salary I was making at S&S but then I knew nothing about the x-ray business. However, he saw the success I had at S&S and thought maybe he could enhance his sales by expanding the repairs and maintenance of x-ray equipment to more than Seifert equipment. The job paid the bills but I was used to wearing a suit, a tie, and working in an office. However, servicing industrial x-ray tubes was a very messy job. It involved overalls and working in a warehouse. The x-ray tube was housed in a large tank of dielectric oil with a window through which the x-rays were emmited. The x-ray tube is powered by a very high voltage generator that smashes electrons from a cathode to an anode, thus emitting x-rays.

The equipment was not only messy but it could be dangerous. An x-ray machine that is powered "on" doesn't make a sound. Not even a quiet hum. If you have experienced dental or medical x-rays you know the precautions I'm talking about. However, there is a big difference between the power needed to scan through the soft tissue of the human body and the power needed to go through six inches of hard steel. The primary beam of an industrial x-ray tube can cause severe radiation burns. Scatter radiation can cause health problems including cancer. When we tested an x-ray unit it was always lowered into an underground pit so the primary beam could be absorbed into the earth. We had lead shields to stand behind to avoid any scatter radiation that might occur but we seldom stood behind the lead shields.

When I was in the Air Force testing high powered, high frequency ECM transmitters, we were supposed to place a "dummy load" over the antennas before turning a transmitter on. However, it was cumbersome and inconvenient so we seldom bothered to use the dummy load. I did back into a radiating antenna once. When I felt heat through my parka, I quickly jumped away and shut the unit down. When no injury appeared the incident only served to make me more cautious about getting too close to an antenna.

One day when Deiter was out of the office on business, an associate of his, who was in the medical x-ray business, was visiting. Medical people were much more cautious about x-rays than we were. I was about to test one of our industrial units. I lowered it into the pit and, for him, I rolled out the lead shields. He brought out his Geiger counter and when I turned the unit on his Geiger counter went berserk. I immediately shut the system down. When Deiter returned, we began investigating why x-rays were bouncing everywhere throughout the building off of the steel rafters. We eventually discovered that our "pit" was under water. The water table had apparently risen and water was surrounding our test pit. The x-rays were being reflected back by the water instead of being absorbed into the earth. I was never sure how long that had been occurring but I never suffered any side effects.

I have no idea if Deiter's industrial x-ray repair business was profitable or not but I was always busy replacing and testing x-ray tubes. Soon I became very good at my job. I loved the fact that all the tools were metric. If you pick a 3/16" wrench and it's too small you need a 4/16", which is actually a 1/4" wrench. In metric, if you pick a #10 wrench and it was too small you need a #11. Simple. I can't imagine why that never caught on the US. The Alaska Pipeline was under construction during this time and NDT (Nondestructive Testing) engineers were desperately needed. All the joints and welds of the pipeline had to be x-rayed. The pay was phenomenal and Deiter tried talking me into going with him. I believe it was both of our wives, though, who nixed any plans of either of us working in Alaska.

It was probably for the best because within the year I got a call from the JCPenney company in answer to a resume I sent them when SIE closed. They wanted to interview me for the position of Product Service Manager. It was a great opportunity to do what I had done so well working at SEI. Moreover, it was an opportunity for a career with an international company. At the interview the JCPenney Regional manager was amazed by what I knew about the service business. To be honest, I was amazed at how similar their operation was to the procedures I had developed and put in place at Service in Electronics. In-home service was the only part of their operation that was new but I would revolutionize their dispatching methods over time.