You know how the military does things. Tell you they will do their best to station you as close to your base of choice as possible. I asked for all west coast locations. I got assigned to the 29th Air Defense Division, Malmstom AFB, Montana!. Well, that didn't seem so bad. I arrived in Great Falls on a Friday and by Tuesday evening they had me on a train heading for North Dakota. I was not a happy camper, what with thin blood and all. You may know this, but it is still winter in the plains in February and March.
As soon as I arrived at Finley, I went into see the First Sergeant and requested immediate reassignment back to Arabia. HI! To me that seemed like a better place to be. The 1st shirt took me across the street to the NCO club, bought me a beer and extolled the virtues of this part of North Dakota. The Air Force is all knowing, all caring and all inflexible.
I got into the swing of things and by spring and the snow melt, I was acclimated. I met a few other hams and got on the air using GI equipment and a wire. Later, I bought my own first personal piece of equipment - the Johnson Viking Ranger. I put up a windom, borrowed an old SP600 receiver and was able to at least work some of the locals on 75 and 40 meters.
I requested a zero call and received KØBQE, which I kept until being assigned to Oregon, where I went back to my original call, W7YBI.
Our MARS station ham call was KØFDV. Our communications officer was also the MARS officer and a EE grad from the university in Grand Forks. He helped us set up a MARS station and designed a 20 meter beam.. We had the tubing all laid out in the field next to the shack, when a maintenance guy mowed the area and chewed our beam up. We never did get that thing going.
This is almost too long ago to remember. I remember the tiles in the shack breaking in the extreme cold. We only had a oil fired space heater to warm the place and could not leave it burning unattended. The shack was an old storage shed and was uninsulated. Needless, to say, I did not ham much from that place in the winter.
I remember working Jerry Johnson, WØVRN, while there. He was a boy from a farm over in Sharon, a few miles from the site. Worked him a few times but didn't meet him until we were neighbors in Samoa in the 70s! We keep in better touch now as we also were in Arabia together and were neighbors in Oregon. Jerry has been KØJJ since the 1970s.
In June 1956, I decided to re-enlist for 6 years (whoa!) and received an assignment I had requested to Portland Air Force Base, Oregon, and my home town. Good bye, blizzardville.