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Instructors & Their Accomplishments

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The Training Crew

It's Quiz-A-Roonie Time
By: Jim Ferstl

"It's Quiz-a-Roonie Time!"  was an announcement that was meant to send chills up and down the spine of my Guidance System Mech Tech students, or at least wake them up. 

    I was a C31551Q, wearer of the coveted "Flying Ice-cream Cone" of the Air Training Command, and saw tech school as a continuation of basic military training.  Oh, was I bad!  "Tough love" is what we would call it today. What we called it back then couldn't be put on a family oriented web site. I pushed them to "Aim High" long before it became fashionable.

    The idea came to me at o'dark-thirty, during a boring drive, past the dump, to the GAM-77 training building.  All we had to listen to was WLS out of Chicago.  Around 5:30 every morning, after pork belly and bean (soy that is) futures were read off, the announcer would proclaim "It's Quize-a-Roonie Time" and pop a question. Wow...just what I needed for my arsenal of
torture!

   So most every afternoon, while preparing my lesson plan for the next day,  I would create a short quiz to be delivered next morning at the beginning of my "A Shift" theory class.

   My students got better and better as the course progressed.  They often took their UNCLAS TOs to the barracks to study.  At least that is what they said...

   And they will remember the hands-on part phase of the course with scotch tape on printed circuit card connectors and relays removed to simulate equipment malfunctions.  What fun! 

   Never heard how my students did; how effective my training was.  Just hope it was worth the effort...on both sides of the podium.

Instructor's Who Were Also Air Policemen

During the Cuban Missile crisis most of Chanute's Air Policemen were sent to Florida to secure expanded operations there. To fill in, several instructors from the 3345th Technical School Squadron were volunteered to receive training and stand expanded watch duty on the base.

Bill Meredith's Air Police Experience

Chanute - The Ultimate Experience
By: Ted Tutterow

I went back to the Test Cells twice after finishing the 3-Level course ..... first for 5-Level school and then the last six months of my enlistment. (1965) 

     That last six months at the Test Cells was absolutely miserable!  There was a bunch of senior NCOs who's bad attitude was the result of their being caught in a big Navy RIF after Korea so they transferred to the Air Force with reduction in grade.  When not harassing the airmen instructors they were pulling rank on each other and writing up incident reports on each other.  (Actually, I think they were just natural-born A** Holes from birth.)  They particularly failed to see the humor of a non-existent Airman Ed Goss going all the way through a 3-level course and graduating highest in his class.  They couldn't understand why out of 20 instructors pulled in 1961, that only one re-upped.  (That one poor soul was so far in debt that he needed the re-up bonus to stay out of jail!) 

     We didn't consider ourselves part of "The Real Air Force" ..... we were in ATC ..... "Army of Terrified Civilians."  You guys in the field were our heroes.  When you guys came back for 7-Level or 9-Level school we envied the neat squadron patches on your tailored fatigues, zippered jump boots, and the general give a damn attitude toward Chanute and all its BS ..... you were part of the real world ..... not some Lewis Carol chemically-induced fantasy world that was Chanute.  Maybe some of us would have stayed in if we'd "gone to the field" and become a real "Vital Member of the Aerospace Team" as the recruiting posters of the time said.

     Somehow the instructor war stories of running out of chalk, or someone screwing up and assigning an Indian and a Pakistani to the same class in the basic electronics course does not have quite the same level of excitement or interest as those tales from the Real Air Force you guys tell.

     There was one thing that sort of said everything about the "Chanute Experience" was when the Army was looking for technical people to transfer from other branches as a Warrant Officer in about 1963.  Word spread like wildfire on the base about the Warrant Officer program and the Army Recruiting Office down in Champaign was totally swamped with Airmen and NCOs trying to get in the door.  It was so bad that there were cops directing traffic for several blocks around.  The base commander put out an order that no one was to go there ..... that the Army recruiters would come to the base.  They had morning and afternoon sessions in the base theater for two days and it was standing room only every session.

Instructor’s This “N” That

A Few Instructors Posing For Photos

Your Guidance Counselor
By: Al Gillette

You ask most folks "How do it do dat" and you will get the standard answer, well, you tell it where it is, and then tell it where you want it go, and send it on its way.That is all well and good, but again, how do it do that?

     The answer is simple, a mathematical computation, as a matter of fact many computations, on going from the launch point to impact.

Keeping it simple: 
     First, draw a line from pole to pole thru the earth, and then O* to 180* and then 90*  thru 270*. All angles from one to the other are 90* Taking any one given point on the surface of the earth (northern or southern hemisphere) as present position, and a vertical axis from that point thru the center of earth (Z axes of the stable platform) and of course the X and Y axes 90* apart and you have the same 90* condition as the earth.
     Now tell the computer, the heading (this is so the computer can figure math angel of the missile from the x or y axes so it can determine speed which we will go into later) The Verdan comes up with the 9 directional co signs (math angles) for the earth, and for the missile platform and this places it at present position. Now at "operate", the BNS gave the computer heading and velocity along that heading (Ve and Vn), the computer took this and extrapolated this speed and came up with speed along the X and Y axis of the platform, any change in this was detected by the VM1 Velocity meters feed to the computer and was corrected along these two axis. (as movement along these two axis happened, the nine directional co sins  (the angles) from the platform to earth changed and "present position" was updated and displayed to the Radar Nav.

     Well that roughly, and about as simple as I can make it, is how the guidance system got started as to where it was, and kept track of where it was going. Now, where did you want it go and how did it get there??

     The RN (radar navigator) put in a "target", alas, the Long and Lat position of the target as which the computer recognized as just another dot on the face of the earth, drew the same lines up and down, north and south, east and west and computed the mathematical point.
     Then the computer compared the math point on the msls present position, the position of the target, and  computed a steering signal that was fed to the flight control system, a signal that would maintain a closure rate of these angles (msl and target) at the rate of velocity (speed).  If these angles were all closing at the same rate then no steering change need be made,but as these angles decreased as determined by speed, the computer would make any corrections in steering that would cause these angles to decrease to O, at O a fuse signal was sent to the war head and the flight was over...

     Of course there were many conditions that the fuse signal was generated by different means, as a high cruse with a vertical dive and then the baro switches came into play. I know, I know, there are many little facts left out, and hundreds maybe thousands of things that could be added, but "Simply", this answers "how did it do dat"  In case you wanted to know.....

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Last updated on:  Sunday, January 03, 2010
Number of pages:  231.