Trivial Pursuits

One thing I remember about the dorm environment at Keesler AFB is that fads tended to spread really quickly, and so it was with "line control" planes during the spring and summer of 1973.

The "devotees" were divided into 2 distinct groups:

The first were the recreational / creative types. They made planes out of things like beer cans and cigar boxes - the stranger the better (I'm amazed some of them actually flew)... That group tended to use the standard ".049" cox engines and congregated in the area in front of the squadron building.

The second group consisted of the speed / skill types... Their planes were much larger (2 to 3 foot wingspans) and were hand crafted out of balsa and silkspan with engines 5 to 10 times more powerful than the ones the "creatives" used. Some of those planes reached actual speeds of 90 MPH, which necessitated a lot of space - so that crowd used the baseball fields across Falcon Street.

Aside - I need to step back in time here:
When I was 10 years old I really wanted a line control airplane but my mom wouldn't buy me one (they were too expensive) so I saved up my allowance and got myself a Cox F4U Corsair. (The price was around $12 in 1963 which is roughly $100 in 2014). It was absolutely beautiful, and I was totally fascinated by it. I spent countless hours examining how the controls and the engine worked - I loved that thing... But the first time I actually fired it up it scared the living crap out of me. I had no idea the freaking thing would be that loud, and as a result I wouldn't get anywhere near it when it was running.
So, that summer my dad and I would occasionally head over to the playground at Chatham Park Elementary School (Havertown, Pa) and he'd fly it while I watched from a "safe" distance... He was really good (not surprising since he'd been a WWII fighter pilot) and a sizable crowd gathered whenever we were there.
One day dad was making some low altitude passes around the playground when a poodle (apparently thinking the Corsair was a noisy bird) came running out of the crowd, jumped up and caught the propeller in it's mouth... The pooch stood there stunned for a few seconds (I'm betting that really hurt) and then ran off yelping with it's owner close behind (neither the plane nor the dog suffered any significant harm)... It took me a long time to stop laughing. I mean, we were all watching the plane going around and suddenly it had a mid-air collision with a flying poodle... Yeah - maybe you had to be there :-) But the point is that although I really liked line control planes I had no desire to fly one.

And back to 1973:
My roommate Juneau was one of the guys that went totally hardcore. He got hold of a used ".35" engine and a plane kit, and we got to work.
Now - up to that point I'd had no idea what was involved in building a high-performance model plane... The kit was nothing more than a bunch of balsa ribs and spars that you had to glue together to form the airframe. The real "art" was covering the entire thing in silkspan (a thin material similar to vellum paper) which came in sheets. You had to cut and fit it over and around the wings, tail and fuselage (without wrinkles) while applying coats of "dope", which causes the silkspan to shrink and harden. You also had to mount the engine and fuel tank, route the control lines, get all the flight surfaces working and balance the whole mess - the point being that it was a lot of work... (Painting it would have been pointless given the life expectancy so we just left it "raw".)

Yeah - I quickly became Juneau's "tech"... It's not that he couldn't do the work himself - it's just that patience wasn't his strong suit. (Quite the opposite, actually.) But I really enjoyed building things (thank you OCD) so I didn't mind...

Over time Juneau got good enough to fly with the "big boys", doing figure 8's, inside loops, outside loops, wing-overs - all kinds of stuff... It's hard to convey in words just how impressive it was to watch those guys fly. Those planes were incomprehensibly fast, and the maneuvers were crisp and instantaneous - it made me dizzy just watching. 
And the aerobatics were only part of the challenge. The "pilot" had to remember to sequence his stunts so if one loop twisted the control lines the next had to untwist them... And most importantly, he had to know when he was flying inverted because the slightest twitch of the control lines in the wrong direction would turn the plane into kindling. And that was Juneau's Achilles Heel - he was "inversion impaired"...
That's not to say he crashed every time he flew - but it happened often enough to where (over time) I lost enthusiasm for repairing the wadded up remnants. (I did get really good at it, though.)

Yeah - I guess this is another one of those posts that doesn't really have a point (other than highlighting the extent of my panic disorder when I was 10 years old) - it's just something that (for some reason or another) stands out in my memory..

 And it was nice to reflect on some of the good times that Juneau and I had when we weren't busy getting on each other's last nerve :-)

Morning, Afternoon and Night

During the first part of my training (Basic Electronics) at Keelser AFB in 1973 life was rather chaotic. Not only was I trying to adapt to yet another dfferent environment, but those of us in the "self-paced" program were constantly getting shuffled from room to room (and even shift to shift). It was rare to have the same roommate for more than a week. But once I started Air Traffic Control Radar Repair training the dorm situation settled down significantly. Yeah - after you'd been there for a few months the T.I.s stopped shuffling you around so much. As a matter of fact, I remained in the same room (in the first floor bay next to the office) with the same roommate (Airman Juneau aka The Grinch) for the last 4 months of my training...

Once again, here's the picture of Juneau from an earlier blog entry. (It was out of context at the time, but it did help explain the nickname.)

This was outside the auto hobby shop at Keesler AFB during the summer of 1973, which reminds me of a somewhat related story:
One day when Juneau and I were working on the 'cuda (it might have been the day this picture was taken) I inadvertently locked my keys in the trunk while putting some tools away. Luckily, I kept a spare set back in my room and even more luckily (so I thought) a couple of airmen in a '68 Camaro offered to give me a ride to the triangle while Juneau stayed behind to keep an eye on my car.
Now - the round trip should have taken 10 or 15 minutes, except every time the driver saw anyone he knew he pulled over to talk to them. And as it turned out, he knew a lot of people, so the round-trip ended up taking over an hour (it would have been faster to walk). I was a bit irritated at first but by the time I got back with the spare keys I was pretty amused by the whole thing... Juneau (on the other hand) was all "WTF??" (He didn't think it was the least bit funny).

Aside: Another time Juneau and I took the car to the auto shop to replace a bad U-joint. I had never done that before but the "book" made it sound pretty easy. And it was, until we tried to get the old joint out of the yoke. We had removed the retaining clips but we still couldn't get the stupid thing to budge. We were trying to  press it out with a bench vise (the shop didn't have a hydraulic press) and were having no luck, when an old retiree (who had been rolling his eyes as he watched us) couldn't stand it anymore. He came over with a big hammer and an old bolt and whacked the joint apart in about 30 seconds. I was like "Oh... So that's how you do it..." But I digress...

Back to main topic:

The biggest problem with being on "A shift"was having to get up so early (around 4:30AM). That's because the daily briefing (in front of the building) started at 4:45AM and the formation marched off to Cody Hall around 5AM. Hence, getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep would mean hitting the sack around 8:30PM, which none of us was willing to do... The solution was to split our sleep schedule in half: 3 or 4 hours after lunch - and another 3 or 4 after the evening's "festivities".
 Now - you would think that never getting more than 4 hours consecutive sleep would have serious side effects, but I did it for months without any issues. Except for one day late in the fall of 1973:

I surfaced from a deep sleep and realized it was starting to get light out. When I saw "4:57" on my clock I totally panicked. Not only had I missed the morning briefing, but if I didn't get outside immediately the formation was going to leave without me. So I bailed out of bed (Juneau was already gone - I was seriously pissed that he didn't wake me), threw on my fatigues and boots, grabbed my books and ran out to Falcon Street. Luckily, the formation was still there so I headed for my usual spot - but someone I didn't recognize was already there... Then I looked around at the other guys and realized I didn't recognize any of them... They were all like "Who the f*** are you and what are you doing here?"

At that point I was so seriously disoriented (not to mention groggy) that I was literally nauseous... Then it finally dawned on me (pun intended) that it was lighter out than it should be - and furthermore, the sun was in the wrong place... I stood there for few moments as it all sank in and finally said "This is C shift - isn't it..." They were all like "Well, duh!"... And I was like "Oh... I thought it was A shift".
Yeah - I had woken up from my afternoon nap thinking it was already the next morning. Everyone thought it was pretty hilarious - and I guess I did too :-)  I just couldn't believe how long it had taken me to figure out what had happened... I blame it on the adrenalin...

You know, it's funny - whenever I find posts about Keelser online they make reference to how hard tech school is and how much work there is... I honestly don't remember it that way... I have no recollection of ever doing homework (so I had lots of free time) and I still aced almost every test. Yeah - all in all it was a pretty good time :-)