Luce Sea Stories

Luce Sea Stories

The first problem I fixed was for Pete Stock. I was accustomed to stick logic from the sya-4 and the uya-4 had mills standard of which I had not used since "C" school. I had to get re-accustomed to the mills standard schematics. Pete was putting a field change in the PA/sym gen for the Chief or doing something to the equipment and the display groups went bananas on him, he went into a panic and asked me for help. The display was full of crazy wild lines and wave forms filling it up all over the place. I looked at it for a few minutes and then informed him that it was painting symbols all the time and not turning the symbol paint off. Asked him to look up paint symbols not in the schematics and then to find it in the wire list for the sym gen. Voila!, there was a wire dangling loose in the rear of the unit which happened to be paint symbols not. He told me thank you for saving his ass and that he thought that I was a genius.

Got busy fixing the ten or so bad lined up on the deck of the computer room low and medium voltage power supplies that had been there for a year or more. Took me a few days to find the bad vcr or zanier diode regulator that was shorting the output voltage to ground instead or regulating it. They all had the same problem. Think the component was called a thyristor. They could not find the problem and just gave up on them.

One day Stock was working on one of the RDDS's, it would just trip out and not power up. He had removed about two thirds of the cables from the back of the unit. He had to go do a quarter deck watch so I decided to have a look at it. I removed the metal guard plate covering the circuit cards in the front and it started powering up. A test point on one of the cards was shorting power out to the metal guard. Pushed the card in all the way and put the guard on correctly and the problem was fixed. Was not easy putting all the cables back in the right place. Stock had been working on it for awhile and it took me about 5 minutes to get it fixed after I got on it.

On the RDDS pms there was something not quite right that I decided to investigate. Inject a square wave at a certain freq. and amplitude and adjust the output voltage to a required level. On some of the or a couple of the settings you could not get them to go to the required level. Even if you cranked the input voltage way up from 1 or 2 volts to like 50 volts the output voltage would not go to where it was supposed to. Something was loading down the signal. I trouble shot it down to 2 wires coming in from the weapons radar systems that were dragging down the signal. I told the Chief and he told the FT's about the bad signal names and it turned out that in the yards they had wired that plug for sya-4 instead of uya-4 so the wrong signals were in the wrong place and they were gun-decking the pms ever since the yards or ignoring the obvious bad indications.

Lt jg Johnson came to me and informed me that we were missing video type 3 in display group one or two I don't precisely remember. Some mystery guy was coming to do something with it and he wanted it to be working correctly for the guy. I got on it and it turned out that the cable was not there I went to the 48 radar room located and routed the coaxial cable from the radar to the computer room. Was not an easy problem to fix. The video was restored to work as per ships blueprints for the type of video that it was. The mystery guy arrived and was going to hook up his magic black box for looking at Russian IFF which was super top secret. He became highly irritated because the cable he had changed in the yards was not there any more. Turns out they did not document any of the changes in the schematics or blueprints due to the secret nature of the stuff. He told me to put the cable back to the way I found it.

One day we were having some kind of an equipment inspection from the division officer. everything was fine till he asked about one of the RAC's the one he was asking about happened to be down and had been for a long long time. It was like a spare and was not usually used. Donny Skroggins was responsible for it so I purposely did not fix it. The division officer was beside himself and could not believe that something did not work. He had not been informed that anything was broken. He asked me why I had not fixed it. I informed him that everything with my name on it was working and that that equipment had Donnies name on it so ask him about it. He talked to

Donnie for a few minutes and then informed me to fix it. It was working in about a half an hour and had been down for a year or more I think.

Stock asked me some question about the tests set he did not understand. I had to spend a couple of days figuring it out to answer his question. But I did and he did not so I guess with me around you could be a brain dead tech. and get along fine.

One day they had a huge delima with the 1218 seemed to have a memory problem they suspected one of the four core units but was afraid to Easter egg them. Upon consulting with me a couple were swapped and the problem moved and the bad unit was then replaced. They were afraid to do what was needed to fix the problem.

We were missile school ship down in the Caribbean one time. OS's from the other ships come aboard and launch missiles from our ship. We were like 117 or so field changes behind and the Chief did not want all the other OS's figuring out that we had not installed any field changes since the yards. He had all the DS's except for me to install all the 117 or so field changes in all of the equipment.

They spent about a week putting them all in, then on Friday they all went on liberty for the weekend. We were to get underway on Monday morning to go and be the missile school ship. They had not tested any of the equipment when installing the field changes just put them in Kamikaze style. Turns out every piece of equipment was hard down with five or more problems in each equipment. I did not go on liberty and stayed aboard and fixed everything that week end I repaired more than a hundred problems. Many of the field changes were installed improperly, wire problems, many of the flat packs on cards were sloppily bent and had shorted leads on them. Felt like super tech. at that time.

One day at mail call the division officer handed me my letter from the U.S.Consulate General of Quebec Quebec Canada. He told me that he wanted to know what was in that letter. I handed it back to him and said OK read it to the work center. He opened it and commenced to read it to us all. I had written the Consulate General a letter thanking him for getting my military pass port to me as promised. I had recounted how I was going to take a leave and ended up not going because of all the problems I had arranging the trip. Out of all the problems and disappointments the really only thing that was right was the consulate general they had delivered, so I acknowledged that and thanked them. He was writing back and thanking me for the nice thank you letter. He said he read my letter to everyone and they had a nice day. He said they get hundreds of complaints and very rarely get thank yous. The division officer patted me on the head and left.

I was sent to a one week soldering school to NASA specs. I was sent to a one week school to be the drug exemption representative for the ship. I was sent to Mare Island for another "C" school on the KCMX, at that time I had been on-board for about a year. Was not an easy school but I was tied for the top of the class rather than being at the bottom as previously at DS school. Back on the ship I never worked on the KCMX Rusty Elkins did that and did not want me touching it evidently.

There was a problem with the KCMX and Rusty and several tech reps worked on it for a week. turned out to be a wire wrap block that put a certain resistance and character to a series of signals and needed to be re-wrapped because the tolerances were somehow off and caused the KCMX to be off. Guess it was a really tough problem. Elkins did not ask for help, at least from me. I believe I could have contributed to the solution though.

One day in Charleston South Carolina or Savana Georgia I don't remember exactly where I was riding in a car with fellow DS's and they were passing the joint around. I was being clean and sober so I did not hit off the joint just passed in on to the next person. Later in the shop they said I was smokeing pot with them. I told them I was not and got distressed about it and they insisted that I was. I found myself riding in a car again with them smoking pot and when it was handed to me instead of passing it on to the next person I told them to watch me. I rolled down the window and threw the joint out. I then asked them if I was smoking pot with them. No, they replied and don't hand him the joint any more.

I'd be working on circuit cards or power supplies in the KG-22 little krypto room and my work center sup would come in and hide a bag of pot in there by me while I was working. I did not like that at all. We would be at home port and my fellow DS's would lock the computer room door and turn off the ventilation system and smoke pot in the computer room on the ship. I got highly alarmed about that being clean and sober and all. They used to use the coke mess money to finance buying and dealing drugs to the OS"s, crystal meth mainly.
They had some Graham scales in the kg-22 room for measuring it out. I raised the problem at an AA mtg. looking for a solution because according to the rules in the Navy if you know about it it is your duty to turn them in and if they are caught and you did not turn them in then you are punished right along with them for the infraction whether you are guilty or not. I described what was happening at the AA mtg. and got an answer from a Navy Chief who was in AA and an alcohol counselor in the treatment center for the Navy. He said to give them fair warning and then not to accept the behavior anymore after that. So the next day at quarters I requested to make an announcement. Went to the front of the division at quarters and announced that I am not saying that I have seen anyone hide pot in the krypto room while I was there or I have not necessarily seen anyone smoking pot in the computer room while I was there, but starting tomorrow if I do see anything like that on the ship I will turn them in. That was the fair warning. After the fair warning all the drug related activity on board completely terminated, at least all that was previously happening around me.

Guess I really pissed off the Chief when I dropped the fair warning bomb at quarters. Guess I should have consulted with him about that. It made him look very very bad, I was doing his job rather than him doing it. Was the Chiefs job to straighten out the division not the 3rd class PO DS's job. So he dropped a bomb on me. He got orders elsewhere and dropped a horrible horrible evaluation bomb on me. Many 2.8's on many levels a no good conduct award level eval. The druggies and incompetents were getting 4.0's and the clean and sober super tech was getting 2.8's. I did some research and found out that the Chief was supposed to go over the eval with me prior to it being submitted and he did not do that. The only option I had to defend myself or have any hope of correcting the eval was to write a rebuttal statement. I wrote my multiple page rebuttal and submitted it. Found myself sitting in the operations dept head Lt. Commander Sealy's office discussing my rebuttal with him. I had described how the incompetent and other druggie techs were getting 4.0 evals and I was super tech and clean and sober and I was getting 2.8's and why was that? Mr Seally kept saying I did not want to submit the rebuttal and I kept saying yes I do and furthermore I demand an investigation. He told me that heads would role and I told him that my head would not role. He asks me if I get a 4.0 eval could we throw away the rebuttal. I informed him OK all I ever wanted was a good eval. So he threw away the rebuttal and I got my 4.0 eval. Effectively I had blackmailed the dept head. Was finally learning how to get along in the Navy.

Pete Stock and I often had some pretty severe arguments, he was allot like me. One time we were really arguing and I was thinking to myself how can I get along with this guy what would they do in AA. Then it came to me "give him a hug". So I slowly walked up to him with my arms out and gave him a big hug. He really hated that!! After that in the future when we would have disagreements I would walk towards him with my arms extended for hugging and he would immediately start becoming highly negotiable. Pete would say anything you want just don't hug me.