With apologies to Barbra. I was reading thru the (other) usual source this morning and came upon this lil blurb...
A Beacon of BRAC: Air National Guardsmen from six states have potentially saved the Air Force some $31 million by stepping up to move a radar research tower from Rome, N.Y., to Springfield ANGB, Ohio. Mandated under BRAC 2005, the Air Force Research Lab set out to consolidate four radar towers near Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. With initial contract estimates as high as $35 million, AFRL sensors directorate officials turned to the New York Air National Guard's 213th Engineering Installation Squadron in 2007. Harnessing Air Guard manpower from across the nation, the squadron estimated that it could complete the project for just $4.2 million. In late May, the Air Guardsmen, supported by active duty airmen, completed the disassembly, move, and reassembly process at Springfield, all for $600,000 under the unit's cost projection. "The underlying theme behind BRAC is achieving savings for the taxpayers. This effort is one of our biggest success stories to date," said Frank Albanese, AFRL's BRAC director. (Springfield report by Derek Kaufman)
Hey! I used to do that! And apropos of sumthin' I said yesterday, one of my claims to fame in this life is I was part of a multi-functional USAF Engineering-Installations team that set a record for taking a bunch of big-ass boxes... and I mean a BUNCH, like about 100 semi-tractor trailers worth... and turning them into a fully-functioning aircraft control and warning (AC&W) radar ground control intercept site. Me and about 100 of my closest friends from the E&I division of the 1956th Communications Group spent four months on Doi Inthanon (the tallest mountain in Thailand) putting that site together. That was in the way, way-back... sometime in 1976. I've posted about this before but always in passing, like this:
There are others, of course, most of which we have no photographic record. And most of those events are minor… mundane, even... such as the time my buds and I walked off the hill at Doi Inthanon, Thailand after a hard day of raising the search radar antenna at a long range radar site we (a USAF Engineering & Installations [E&I] team out of Yokota AB, Japan) were building for the Royal Thai Air Force. Raising that antenna was a milestone in a long and difficult installation… and we celebrated by unfurling a home-made banner on the radar antenna… a huge thing cobbled up out of bedsheets, emblazoned with our makeshift "Baker and Sons Radar Installations" logo, and visible throughout the radar station. That banner was a thing we spent the entire evening admiring, all while hoisting many Singhas in celebration… accompanied by team members from the various E&I disciplines deployed with us… radio, telephone, construction… among others. A victory of sorts, and one to be celebrated. Once again… we were heroes, just for one day.
I'm pretty sure I took my camera with me on that TDY, but any pictures I took of that adventure have gone missing over the years. I bitch and moan constantly about losing all my photos and this is yet another case of that. There's always The Wiki, though... and here's what the RTAF station on Doi Inthanon looks like today:
DI was a LOT less civilized the last time I saw it and that microwave tower on the right wasn't there. But that golf ball behind the green water or fuel tank? My buds and I built the radar antenna inside that and all the other radar stuff, too. I've got the tee shirt.
I'm impressed. No wonder you're so prolific at sending blog posts out into the clouds of the internet.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Red. The REAL reason I'm so prolific is coz I'm just FULL o'... hot air. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhile junking with the Diva, I found a poster similar to the above photos. Now what did I do with it? That is the question of my days.
ReplyDelete"What did I do with that?" is heard a lot in these parts, too.
ReplyDelete