"End of an era: USN's Tomcats make their final approach before decommissioning"

An unrelated to this dicusion but never the less overdue (just saw it in
Naval Aviation News) congratulations on your COC. Nothing beats CO of a
reserve or adversary squadron.

So Woody's now the CO of a reserve or adversary squadron? Congrats! Which
one?

I'm a CASS (Consolidated Automated Support System) op/maintainer. CASS has
taken over all the various test benches the navy used to use and now tests
90% of the avionics coming out of birds with the other 10% in offload
testing. You probably worked in shop 3? Anyway, I work in shop 8, used to be
the VAST shop, don't know if they had that in '72. Our strike/ECM shop was a
bunch of goofballs/slackers, hope yours was better ;-). I'm just doin' my
job...

Jason


"Jim" wrote in message
...
Jason,

What was you job?
I was an AT2 (way back "in-the-day") on the America in '72, in AIMD ECM
shop. I also felt that we contributed to the overall effort off the coast
of RVN.

Thanks for your service.

Jim

Jason,

My AIMD ECM shop was top notch. We did major maintenance on the ECM gear
from all the squadron aircraft. I was the night supervisor and had a great
group of guys. Made working 16 to 18 hours a day bearable. Don't remember
VAST. We worked on ALQ100, ALE25, APR25 and 27 ALQ41 - I think those
numbers are correct. There was a separate shop for the VAQ EA6Bs and a
radio shop.

Jim

Oh boy, yeah, all that stuff's way gone. The only ECM stuff we really work
on any more is ALQ 99s, the EA-6B pods. At least that's all I know about.
The ECM shop was very hush-hush and we never found out much about what went
on in there. All I know is there are four locks to get through before you
could get into that shop :-|. I don't know how the America was set up but we
had 10 shops + cal lab, Shop 1 is generators, 2 is FLIR/ATFLIR, 3 is
strike/ECM, 4 is 2M/cable repair, 5 is ATE (automated test equipment), 6 is
the AE (aviation electrician's mates, wires/power generation) shop, 7 is
RADAR, 8 is CASS, 9 is COMM/ALQ-99, 10 is IATS (intermediate avionics test
set) (part of shop 8). We used to have a TARPS shack but since the Tomcat's
gone there's not much use for that, is there? :-P

Jason


"Jim" wrote in message
...
Jason,

My AIMD ECM shop was top notch. We did major maintenance on the ECM gear
from all the squadron aircraft. I was the night supervisor and had a
great group of guys. Made working 16 to 18 hours a day bearable. Don't
remember VAST. We worked on ALQ100, ALE25, APR25 and 27 ALQ41 - I think
those numbers are correct. There was a separate shop for the VAQ EA6Bs
and a radio shop.

Jim

Having a TS shop with a lot of locks was great while on ship. We worked on
the ECM gear and the IFF crypto keys so the shop was like a vault. No one
could get in without being on the list. Had a young BIG marine guard to
enforce the policy. MAAs couldn't get in even the leading CPO couldn't come
into the workbench area. Needless to say - we had fun with that. FOOD,
DRINK and MUSIC and it only got up to 80 degrees there. Life was good! ;(

Jim wrote:

Having a TS shop with a lot of locks was great while on ship. We worked on
the ECM gear and the IFF crypto keys so the shop was like a vault. No one
could get in without being on the list. Had a young BIG marine guard to
enforce the policy. MAAs couldn't get in even the leading CPO couldn't come
into the workbench area. Needless to say - we had fun with that. FOOD,
DRINK and MUSIC and it only got up to 80 degrees there. Life was good! ;(

Just wanted you guys to know how much I've enjoyed reading this thread.

Please keep posting. As much as I like the stuff that begins "There I was,
out of airspeed and ideas," I also enjoy hearing from the people who kept
'em flying.