Date: 3/20/99
From: Les Thompson
To: invert go-fer <invert@att.net>
Topic: Invert GCI (1970)

I was there when we knocked down the old wood ammo box revetment around the Radio shop, and put in the metal one. TSgt Ken Foster, our NCOIC, had a wry sense of humor and we put up square box sections on each corner to make it look a bit like a castle.

They also redid the outdoor theatre that year, real bummer. Afterwards concrete and solid benches, before was just dirt and the benches were mounted on sunken 4x4's. The benches had been loosened over time and you could rock back like a reclining loge seat, the empty beer cans didn't roll noisily to the stage and they really didn't put much effort in stopping you from taking a leak on the fence, instead of hiking down to the latrine. Have some 8mm home movies taken from the top of the search radar tower, the radar guys said no sweat, just come down if you start feeling real warm.

Was the squadron bar still there? We turned the old stereo hootch into a squadron bar and the only paint we could get was equal amounts of red and white. Turned out whorehouse pink and there were lots of comments about it going around, so at commanders call the 1st Sgt. got up and stated that he didn't know why everyone was bitching, because he loved the color and only wished that there was enough left to paint his room the same color. Well, one night while he was downtown, I got the leftover paint and bribed his roommate with some beer and painted the inside of his door with the last of the paint. He was so drunk, he didn't notice it until the next day.

We kept having problems with the little window type air conditioning units.  If one failed, the radio equipment room temperature would rise and pretty soon the next unit would fail, and so on.   It got so hot one time that some of the bakelite knobs inside one of the radios actually started to blister.  We were constantly calling the A/C people out and having problems staying 'on the air' because of overheating.
They knew that the setup was marginal and what was really needed was more cooling capacity.  

Finally one of the A/C guys that was out offered to help.  He told us to cut an x" by x" hole in the side of the building and build a platform that would come up to x" below the opening.   We did as instructed and when it was finished called him.  He came out with that nice big A/C unit and slid it into the waiting hole, and said that if anyone asked, it had always been there as far as we knew. 
Supposedly some Colonel had two units installed in his office, so that if one quit all he had to do was start the other one.  This turned out to be one of them in the shop for servicing and it had been "lost" before they could reinstall it.
After that, we never had any problems keeping the room at a reasonable operating temperature.   No one ever came around asking questions, so their story to the original owner must have been choice! Needless to say, it earned him our heartfelt thanks and a goodly amount of free beer. /Les