Comms....

Military grey-hairs amongst us will understand

Well, maybe back in the late 1800s could be some Indian born soldier wearing a blue US Army uniform might have said - “Major —look smoke signals!” but I have been away from the tribe so long I forgot how to read them!”

Move the clock to the 1960s… I was fascinated with shortwave radio. A group of four of my high school (seniors) were ham radio operators. My neighbor down the street was Dr J. Lell Elliot, K5DRU.. also PhD and my mentor in chemistry later when I was a chemistry major at Pan American College. Solid good guy…

But back to my high school acquaintances….one was the son of the editor at the newspaper I worked at (Edinburg Daily review) and thus my boss, another was the big brother of a dark haired beauty in my class— still is— in our 70s… Another was the son of a well known family practice doctor in town (and on my bicycle paper route when I was “throwing” newspapers—- 8 miles a day, and the fourth was a super smart guy I knew would go into education and eventually became a high school principal.

So, setting the scene one day the town was shocked when Beau May, the doctor’s son was putting up an antenna and it touched a high power electrical line and he was electrocuted. The entire town was shocked (no pun intended) but the doctor did an amazing thing…. in his grief, he donated the entire radio set up to the High School and we had K5TSR (Beau’s old call) Edinburg High School radio club. Thus my interest was further stimulated and by Junior year I had passed the five wpm code test and was a novice.. WN5CLA.. followed in a year by 13 wpm morse code test, and I was a General class with WA5CLA call. Eventually after about 15-20 yrs I passed the 25 wpm Extra Class code test and the rather technical exam for EXTRA class license and chose to adopt W5RF call. The original W5RF was a “silent key” who lived on the border of MS and Alabama. He was well thought of. Once flying a Cessna from east to west down there I got on 2 meter FM “W5RF/aeronautical mobile” and was inundated with calls from the ground relating how lucky I was and what a good guy the original W5RF holder was. I even got my hands on one of his QSL cards from back in the day.

Back to the smoke signals.. while in high school and medical school I got on the air some and contacted K7UGA. Senator Barry Goldwater. I have a picture of him operating a “MARS” station - Military Affiliated Radio Service - not a planet. After surgical residency I got assigned to the US Air Force Academy hospital and while there gave a bunch of my old radio stuff to a young enlisted airman who had just gotten his license..late 1970s that was.

Now I read in QST, the American Radio Relay League magazine…. that ALL the military academies have closed their ham radio clubs due to lack of interest - except for West Point. “What the Heck???” I have even heard through the grapevine that the communication schools in military no longer teach morse code - again “What the heck?”

Let me just say that if we get in a shooting war and the troops need communication.. “Who you gonna call?” Really. one or two proper EMPs and everything gets fried.. all the transistors in your six car computers, your TV set, your Apple Cellphone, and all the radio sets - transmitters and receivers and of course GPS and most of the satellites in orbit.. Oh wait… the old “tube” sets will survive. Rumor is lots of Russian airplanes have tube sets in the radio stack… and I can tell you when I am on the ham bands, the “Eastern block” countries, the ‘Stans and of course Russia have a very well educated, robust ham radio community and they can sure as heck send and receive morse code.

Here is a picture of my WWII transmitter, a BC-610….likely one just like this shocked Stephen Spielberg’s dad in India but fortunately didn’t kill him. Yes, he was a prior “ham” who got put in comm sqdrn - while my Daddy was working as a truck mechanic in the same 490th bomb sqdrn in the CBI theatre.

Oh forget my little buddy.. he didn’t make it through the 2021 Snowmaggedon in Texas..

But - saying all this and running up some yellow and red flags (see that is another comm method) about lack of comm.. If our WOKE idiots running our military done WAKE up… we may be on the losing end of the next shooting war. Cause we cannot communicate!

This is a fabulous article, sent by my cuz..BJ

Western art never fails!