The 1833rd

When I arrived at McClellan AFB in Sacramento in January of 1974 I had no idea that I would be spending the next 5 years there (and would get married - and have a son)... But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's bit more background:

In the 1970's, McClellan was a "logistics" base - the depot for maintenance and overhaul of a wide variety of aircraft and electronics systems (including Air Traffic Control equipment). At the time, there were over 12,000 people working on the base, the vast majority of whom were "wage grade" civil servants (almost entirely ex-military).

I was assigned to the 1833rd EIS (Electronic Installations Squadron), which was part of the Air Force Communications Service (AFCS - "Providing the reins of command"). Our squadron reported into AFCS Northcom headquarters at Griffiss AFB in Rome, New York, which means that by the time we got to work in the morning the folks back east had spent 3 hours compiling lists of issues for us to deal with immediately. (But that's a topic for later...)
The 1833rd was responsible for installing and performing mobile depot maintenance (overhauls) on a variety of electronics equipment throughout the northwest U.S. (including Alaska). And, although it was a military unit, most of the squadron's personnel were civil servants.

Aside: When I found out I was being assigned to an EIS I did some research and found a paragraph in the regs indicating that EI technicians were superior to the "average" Air Force technician. So, when I arrived at McClellan I asked Staff Sergeant Puller (my trainer) exactly what made us better (I thought maybe there was advanced training or something). He reached over to his bookshelf, pulled out the regs and read me that paragraph stating that EI technicians had superior skills... Yup - that was all there was to it :-)

So, during the first couple of weeks I got set up in the barracks (don't recall when I first met my roomie - he was almost never there), took some vehicle operation classes (forklifts, military trucks, etc), was issued cold weather gear (we were subject to short-notice deployment to the arctic) and got ready for my first assignment, which turned out to be a weather radar overhaul at Scott AFB in Belleville Illinois.