Current letter home from Iraq

Jack_Crow

Enlightened
Joined
Feb 9, 2004
Messages
417
Location
West Palm Beach FLA (for a while anyway)
Hi all,
Please forgive this. It was from one of my Ham Radio Friends, the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

(my answers in these)
...............................................................................
Mr. B,
Greetings on the day.

I hope you don't mind too much, but Im going to use your letter, mark it up and CC a bunch of people. It will simplify my life to a large degree.

I will have to look up in my 'sent box' for items that may have been missed. I tend to purge that often because the photos take up a lot of yahoo space. I pay for 50meg and photos fill that up quickly. We will see.

As for the rest, answers interlaced............

Briggs Long wrote:
Hi Jack-

I've been away (upstate NY-Adirondacks) and back for a week and haven't
seen any of your posting since before that. I'm wondering if your long
awaited "vacation" time-off has finally arrived and you've gotten away
to meet your W1FE for your romp around Eurovilles. I hope so.

(Joanne and I just sent some money to the UK travel agent to reserve us some rooms and car service. I wanted a UK agent to do the bookings because they know the local situation than somebody in VA might know about. Also I wanted a local number to beef at if things went to slime. You can take the New Yorker out of New York, but you can't separate the attitude out.)

The news here is all about wartime atrocities against POW's by our
troops,

(Face it, Saddam couldn't get some of his idiot people to play ball either. You can't imagine the power Islam and ignorance has on the population. The MP's tell me things that boggle your mind.

After that contractor type was killed on camera, a lot of my charitable attitude just went poof.

BTW we got issued plates for our vests today. Our vests stock would stop a hand gun round. Now with the plates they can stop an AK round.

A very large difference in deliverable energy. In Virginia, we use old automotive brake rotors as targets when we shoot in a field. They make a nice clang when hit.

Handgun rounds just leave a smudge.

Cheap bullets from my SKS (an early edition of the AK) just shatter the rotors.

These are some kind of ceramic plate that will dissipate the energy and spread the load across a goodly amount of square inches. They also make the vest heavy! Broken ribs are better than punctured internal organs. Some things you recover from.

A couple of troopers drowned in their vests when vehicles or bodies end up in the water. Nice thought. Remember the song Mack the Knife...
"The cement is there
It's there for the weight you see
Oh five will get you ten
Oh Mack he's back in town."

Needless to say I don't close up the vest so tight that I can't get out of it quickly. I won't carry a back pack either. Iraq teaches one new forms of institutional paranoia.)

Military Intelligence and CIA trained/directed personnel over
there. *******, they even got the President apologizing! While I don't
condone any of it, this is the stuff the press feeds on and they're
getting real fat of late.

(It's amazing the blind spot the media has about the four guys burned alive in their truck and hung from a bridge. Same for dead troopers every so often. Somehow I know that there will be extreme sanction delt to these bozos. Not this week but in the future. The Army won't forgive and forget this. I ain't looking forward to my next call home.)

It's all very undermining to our efforts in
wartime and has to be demoralizing for our troops over there. Reminds
me too much of Vietnam era subversive antiwar crap.

(I have strong political feelings; Sen. Kerry was the poster child for a lot of that subversive crap. I still can't see the country voting for that.)

I have to report that it's really taken over the whole CONUS PR war effort as it's got the government on the defensive here too! Quite the raft of crap IMHO!

Well lessee here, I just traded emails with Matt, who just got
back from the "Hosstraders" ham fest in N.H. and now he's repacking to
head off to Dayton.

(Think I'm going to give Dayton a pass this year. Can't imagine why. I had an outside chance of going last year, but an installation at a VX plant in Indiana came first. Chemical weapons give me the creeps.)

LARC's May meeting is coming up this week and we're
ramping up excitedly for Field Day in June.

(Been thinking about an article for QSX and AMRAD. "Everyday here is Field Day". That's on hold. My camera failed yesterday. The lens drive servo jammed, most likely due to dust. I sent that off to Cannon. We get a regular package pick up once a week now. A mobile post office comes to visit. At the same time finance makes it here to cash checks.)

I'm running the GOTA (Get On The Air)

(That's a new one on me. Jota is more my speed. Then again we did a demo/field day from the front lawn of town hall once. That was a rip.)

Station for LARC and have been over to our FD site at West Hills Park to reconnoiter the site with the idea of relocating the GOTA
tent and antenna options. I think for demonstration's sake, I'll run an
end-fed long wire out of a tuner from my Icom 706Mkllg. That, plus a
low drooping dipole over a center switched reflector on the ground for
NVIS play on 40/75. The LARC 6m & 2m ssb will also run out of the GOTA
site.

I really get a big kick out of Field Day. Not only is it LARC's biggest
activity, but it's good chance for the club to stretch and do the team
effort thing in public. We aren't putting up the satellite tent this
year as: 1) no satellites to work and 2) our satellite guy(s) are doing
other things that same weekend! That was always a good draw and it was
most impressive the year a town official's kid was there when we talked
to astronauts on the Space Shuttle/Space Station.

(That ain't a bad deal. News coverage on the event?)

The antennas looked
cool too. Oh well, our tower and tribander will have to suffice for
eye-appeal!

I don't if I've missed your messages due to you being away or because of
changing filtration by my ISP or some other quirk of technology, but I'm
anxious to get caught up on the news from Scania/Iraq.

(We have a new unit of California Guard running this base. Shooters make a vast improvment to work for than Adminstrators. The guard unit is an Armor company reduced to playing MP's. Most of their tanks are elsewhere. We have some M113 and 577's. Got to drive a 113 around the parking lot. Photos......

http://www.obscure-reference.com/hosted/RadioMike/index.html

The tank drive shots are near the end. Those suckers get hot in the sun.)

We'll be sure to assemble some pix to send your way of FD and the fun of packing up and setting up and operating. Anything we can do for you on this end? Just ask!

(The radio station has been on the air for about three weeks now. The ITT community get's lots of good comments on it.

Had a guy that sits in the guard tower all night ask me for doubles on Gunsmoke and X-1 shows. I may run them as a group. The station went from a novelty to a real service in about a week. I figure it's making about 250mW.

Was thinking of having a 'station jacket' made up. Black nylon or silk. On the front right side (as one would dress in it) in blood red would be a palm tree with a crescent moon logo (this is Islam Land you know). On the left would be a title and name. Can't decide if I should use my own or my screen name from the gun rights board (Jack Crow). On the back it would read

WTFO FM
105.9 Stereo
Scania Iraq
250,000uW

Some how that sounds better than .25 watt.
Stole that idea from Venus Equilateral by George O. Smith.

Also thinking of a station motto. Along the lines of "Clear Either" or "A voice in the dark". Will have to think on it.

Can you ask around for MP3 disks (not down loaded ones, they tend to be buggy and lock up the player) of Old Time Radio (OTR) programming? I think "the green hornet", "the shadow", and "Dragnet" might go well here. Some how "Little orphan Annie" won't go well with this crew. I've got a request in for some Jean Shepard stuff, but the web site has not answered me yet. Some of his old shows might be 'max cool'.

Been thinking of sliding in little clips from various DVD movies I have here. Stuff from Spaceballs, Dr Strangelove, Dirty Harry, Kentucky Fried Move, Galaxy Quest, Star Wars, Casino Royal, The Prisoner, and Airplane might fly here.

Imagine hearing President Mumpery Murphy saying "Gentleman you can't fight in here, this is the war room!".

Or Slim Pickings as Col King Kong doing the review of the emergency kit on the plane.

Got the author reading from the "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy". Imagine the bent minds when that plays for an hour some night.

Can you record some PSA clips (messages of support) from members of the radio club? Something simple like 'My name is YOUR NAME HERE, call sign YOUR CALL HERE, if former military YOUR UNIT/RANK HERE, or YOUR COMPANY HERE, sending some personal greetings to the members and guests of CSC Scania Iraq from YOUR HOME TOWN HERE, care of the Larkfield Radio Club Huntington New York. An MP3 disk with a bunch of those might be fun.)

Best wishes and stay cool.

(Yeah right.
KBR blew up a generator yesterday. Seems a cable failed and took it right out. I presume a phase to phase short. The spare genrack is on line, there is no container around it. It's loud across the base, and almost too loud to stand within 50 feet of. Big V8 D engine and an alternator that can deliver 1300A of 220vac (50hz) If that takes a dump, we will be hot and in the dark for a while. No running water either. There was a large crane today lifting the dud onto a truck. It's going on a Kuwaiti Vacation. A little like taking a New Jersey vacation, to Newark.

Just now the temp in the sun was 131. Kind of perverse thing to do to your self.

We get this very nice reduced alcohol wine from the PX for about a dollar a L. For here it's actually rather nice. I get to use the cork screw part of my Swiss Army Knife. BFD.

According to local legend it takes five or so bottles to get a buzz from it, and I can't drink that much.

The Chaplin's lounge has a freezer, in it are water bottles. When I leave this office, I drop the stuff at the tent, then go on to the chapel and pick up one of these things. Suck on the ice water from the melt in the bottle. After dinner enough would have melted to the point when I pour yesterday's warm wine into the ice. I call it an 'Iraqi wine cooler'. Not too shabby an idea. Wine flavored cool-aid. It stays cold for the rest of the night, and I get full value for the wine purchased. I've been poor too long not to do this kind of stuff.)

Weather here is heating up for the summer
and we're expecting August weather (80's, humidity, and T-storms) today
around here.

(Rain is a blessing and a curse here. Scania in mud is awful. I don't recommend it. Scania in dust isn't so wonderful either. Lately the impression that it's too hot to rain has been here. No logic, just an impression.)

73's,

Briggs,

What's the word on RadioScania? Are you on the air (again?) or back on
"hold."

(Think I answered that already.
Hope all is well
Keep it warm
Jack Crow in Iraq)
 

Darkcobra

Enlightened
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
389
Location
Pittsburg, California
Did I read that right? 131 degrees in the sun! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif
Keep cool and keep us posted, definately a lot better than TV news. . .
 

BC0311

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
May 31, 2003
Messages
2,488
[ QUOTE ]

WTFO FM
105.9 Stereo
Scania Iraq
250,000uW

[/ QUOTE ]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif I got a big kick out of this!

"What The ----?, Over." Takes me back 34 years. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

Britt
 

Jack_Crow

Enlightened
Joined
Feb 9, 2004
Messages
417
Location
West Palm Beach FLA (for a while anyway)
Cobra and BC,
Your answers.

Cobra
131 in the sun. It's tricky.

I don't feel it very much. Partly because Ive been here since the end of december. Also the RH's are very low. The moment you perspire it evaporates. More than a few troopers are treated for 'heat injury' here. IV fluids and restricted duty.

As for news coverage, this is only one little part of a much larger picture. I can talk about this now. We had a trooper killed in a traffic accident recently. Today is the 'service'. Last night when I stopped in the chappel to deliver something, I got to see the pratice.

The Army has a simple but powerful symbol they set up for events like this. A rifle muzzle down, the helmet on top of that, and the troopers boots in front. In our case there is even a little stand KBR built for just that reason. If my camera was working, I most likely would not have taken a photo. I make it a policy not to take photos of the wounded, dead, and now their artifacts. Leave that for the jackels 'on at five'.

I diden't know the guy killed. I put some money in the pot to help out the family.

BC
WTFO is an insiders joke for sure. Did a new load on the Juke box last night. Now there are 26 Gunsmoke and 26 Johnney Dollar episodes. Back to Back. Also some "ask Dr Science" and Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. This should be cool.

Hope all is well.
Jack Crow in Iraq

ps the people I shoot with back home
www.irighti.org
 
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