st1fler wrote:My teacher told us a story like walts about the guy getting hit by the radar thing.
He said some guy turned the satellite off to readjust it and someone phoned the company and complained about their internet being off so they sent someone down there to see what was up and he went to the satellite and saw it was off so he turned it back on and the guy adjusting it got fried.
That's where safety comes in. We hang danger signs on transmitting equipment, even if we're alone, in case someone comes up and thinks it just failed and try to bring it back up.
bossman2 wrote:So Walt did you do any skiing while you where there?? Use the radars for wiener roasts??
Naw, there wasn't anyplace to ski out there ('cept for cross-country.) Speaking of weiners, tho, our 50kW radio at Thule, Greenland, had 2 large (maybe 0 gauge or bigger) transmission lines leading out to the antenna. There was so much energy in those lines you could walk up to them with a flourescent light, hold it up to the lines and it would light up.
Stiffy, I really envy all the work you're putting into all this. Bossman seems to be pretty knowledgeable about all that, too. Me, I turn it on, and there's Vicky. If I turn it on and Vicky don't come up?
. Vicky, too, learning all this programming and then building all of this. So impressive, people. Keep up the great work.
Well, I guess my radio career was pretty cool. My greatest was helping a great team of people to build a spacecraft and fly it to Venus. They used to sit there and say, "Walt, what you do with those radios is black magic." This from people than could maneuver a spacecraft around the sun 1-1/2 times, then put it into orbit around a distant planet, and be only six seconds off their predicted arrival time.
Six freakin' seconds! Those programmers were the real magicians. Then, every orbit, they would turn the spacecraft, point the Star-Tracker at some distant star, take a fix, then turn it back to Earth to start sending more data back to us. Simply unfreakin'believeable.
I say GO, ST1FLER!
And, meanwhile, Laura and Sue are probably gnashing their teeth at all this Techie stuff. grrr-r-r-r-
dang techies
Teehee Love you ladies.
, I know, but something like that actually happened in Alaska. I was out at a remote site named Sparrevohn. All the work crews came out in the summer to do whatever maintenance we had. One of the jobs this summer was to paint the feed horns. We had 4 ea 60' billboard antennas (Tropo Scatter.) We shut down one transmitter so the painter could climb out there and paint the feedhorn. When he came in for lunch we told everyone we were turning the Tx back on, and to check with us before going back. 
