I was thinking back today about my navy days. I worked on
many types of electronic equipment. In two cruises on the Kitty Hawk I worked
on planes and the last cruise on the Enterprise I worked in the higher level
maintenance shop. Many radios, navigation systems and radar required a lot of
maintenance. They were problems until I developed my process and reduced their
down time dramatically. There were other systems on planes that rarely ever
failed. All planes had radio direction finders, but in all three cruises I
never had to replace or repair one. Intercoms in the planes rarely failed. All
five crew members had connections over the intercom. I think I had to change
one com box because of a faulty switch in the three cruises and all the time
ashore. Once I had an identification transponder come into the shop for a
repair. It was an old one and it had a white encapsulation plastic over all of
the components. The idea was the encapsulation kept the components from
shorting out when the planes came down from high altitude cold air and met with
very warm air on land or at sea. The cold air meeting warm air created moisture
that shorted out components. I located the problem with the identification
transponder and wanted to replace the module, but even though that was the
intended purpose for maintenance, the navy wanted techs to troubleshoot down to
the component level and replace a single component because that was cheaper
than sending modules back to the manufacturer. That equipment was so old there
were probably no replacement modules at the manufacturer any more. One more
thing about the electronic equipment that never broke down was the altimeters
(a small radar device on the bottom of the plane that measured the distance
between the plane and the surface). There were only two times when the pilot
wrote up a gripe on the altimeters. The only test equipment for them was a box
about the size of a military ammunition box that was filled with a long delay
cable. The box was hooked up to the altimeter and then the tech would climb
into the cockpit and look at the reading. As long as the reading was 160 feet,
the altimeter was good. The thing I wondered about was why it was not set for
80 feet which was about the height of the flight deck on a Kitty Hawk class
carrier. That would have been the right place to check calibration so the pilot
would know he could clear the flight deck when coming in for a landing. One
other thing that I remember was the long-wire antenna. It was at the aft end of
the plane on the underside. The idea was if the plane was outside the range of
the stub style UHF antennas the crew could let the long-wire antenna roll out
to improve transmission and reception. The long-wire had what was called a
drogue on the end of it. The drogue was like a five pound circular weight that
when the brake on the wire was released it would drag the long-wire out from
the plane. The antenna was rarely used, so rarely that when the crew would roll
it out to check it when flying, they would sometimes forget to reel it back in.
There was a safety measure built in to the system that if it was extended and
the pilot dropped the tail hook to make his landing on the ship, the system
would automatically cut the cable. As some of us know when a metal cable is
under strain and the cable is cut, there is a swift back snap on the secured
end. The antenna cable would snap and wrap around the reel and several other
things in the compartment below where the radar crew sat. Replacing the cable
antenna was a major chore because all of the floor boards had to be removed
(unscrewed) and then the tech would have to lie on his belly to reach down and
remove the remaining cable inside the plane and then restring the new long-wire
cable. I did enjoy working on electronic equipment during my time in the navy
and remember it fondly.
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