always wondered how many military service men and women here.

Poultrygeist said:
I feel for you guys if you went through basic at Ft Jackson in the summer. Columbia, SC holds or did hold the record for consecutive days over 100 degrees.
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I remember El Paso had some kind of record for most days of sunshine, our company clerk at the RCAT drone unit at Oro Grande was an albino with a medical profile promising anyone who kept him outside longer than thirty seconds during daylight hours would be courtmartialed, or so I heard. Regardless, he was definitely the walking equivalent of tri-x pan film.
 
Pio1980 said:
I remember El Paso had some kind of record for most days of sunshine, our company clerk at the RCAT drone unit at Oro Grande was an albino with a medical profile promising anyone who kept him outside longer than thirty seconds during daylight hours would be courtmartialed, or so I heard. Regardless, he was definitely the walking equivalent of tri-x pan film.
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At Ft Bliss the RCATS were what we used for target practice. Actually it was the sleeve they towed.
 
Wanna talk about hot? How about basic training in Amarillo, TX from July to October. Not to mention half dollar sized hailstones! Then to Biloxi, MS for Tech school. Then, Eglin AFB in Ft Walton Beach Fla. If they kept me there I'd have stayed in. But no, Clark AFB, Phillipines. ...out after four.
 
Poultrygeist said:
At Ft Bliss the RCATS were used for target practice. Actually it was the sleeve they towed.
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Supposed to be anyway, the twin 40 and quad 50 (?iirc) AA guns tore them up pretty good. Part of my job was rebuilding the McColloch mills and patching the airframe to put them back in the air. My first encounter with Silastic silicone was patching the bullet holes in the fuel tanks, the only major steel part on the plane.
 
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Being from Columbia you'd think the Army would have sent me to Ft Jackson ( largest basic training fort in the US ) but heck no they sent to the El Paso, Texas. At Bliss you'd wake up in the morning to freezing weather put on your long johns and by afternoon it would be in the 80's and you couldn't take them off. Most desolate place I've ever lived. If Texas needed an enema El Paso would be where it would go.
 
Poultrygeist said:
Being from Columbia you'd think the Army would have sent me to Ft Jackson ( largest basic training fort in the US ) but heck no they sent to the El Paso, Texas. At Bliss you'd wake up in the morning to freezing weather put on your long johns and by afternoon it would be in the 80's and you couldn't take them off. Most desolate place I've ever lived. If Texas needed an enema El Paso would be where it would go.
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Yeppers.
Part of the Oro Grande crew's duties included desert fire duty. Stomping out burning cacti and bush set alight by missile boosters and such was cold work after dark. There was an area where the Nike Herc' 1st stage boosters and such came down, sticking up out of the sand that I called "the enchanted forest".
Finding extinguished solid rocket fuel sticks laying about was common, it world burn ash-less. I remember seeing it in the street gutters in El Paso from the bus window as well.
 
Pio1980 said:
Yeppers.
Part of the Oro Grande crew's duties included desert fire duty. Stomping out burning cacti and bush set alight by missile boosters and such was cold work after dark. There was an area where the Nike Herc' 1st stage boosters and such came down, sticking up out of the sand that I called "the enchanted forest".
Finding extinguished solid rocket fuel sticks laying about was common, it world burn ash-less. I remember seeing it in the street gutters in El Paso from the bus window as well.
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We set up specially equipped target planes with 3 thermite in graphite pots IR heat source targets to test the then new Redeye 3 shoulder fired AA missile system. They definitely wanted the misses found and returned, which were several in the early days. It almost took a winch and line on the plane to get the things to find their way to them in the early days, and the thermite pots would set anything they touched on fire after we brought them down one way or another.

We had a mass cleanup retrieval once that was my only experience in a helicopter, an old huey that howled like a worn out trans-axle. We found quite a lot of stuff, one of our lost planes so old it had vacuum tube electronix. Another find was a 6 cyl turbocharged drone unlike the four cyl radioplanes we serviced and flew.
Fun times, good duty playing with giant radio controlled planes out in the desert while it lasted. Then I got my first of three tours in Germany, as a 91E Hawk crewman again, as permanent party at Grafenwohr/ Vilseck. I know some of you knew that place.
 
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