Comms I informal AAR

[abica]

This was one of my favorite training exercises to date!  We had a lot to learn and a lot of people to learn it.  It was great to see some new faces out there, both experienced Eastwinders and new recruits.  The guys who are new to Eastwind-related events showed initiative and desire to learn, so they won't be FNGs for long!  The classroom sessions were well done and very informative.  We all learned a lot this weekend.

(puts on comms guy hat)


The Good:

~Things noted above. 
~R-105M sets performed to the manual's specs. 
~R-392 sets performed about to our expectations (no manual specs to work from)
~TOC ran well at night.
~SOI/CEO&I were successfully implemented a vast majority of the time.
~Without covering radio procedure in classroom session, inexperienced RTOs did well.
~Brett and I got to use the weekend as a R-105M laboratory, and got to answer some questions we had as well as generating several new questions. 
~I can't get through 5 minutes without thinking of food- I (and others) really enjoyed the sausage and breads for lunch.  Houli's sloppy joes were great!  And the breakfast bread Sunday.....wow.


The Bad:

~R-105M battery packs caused problems for the daytime exercise.  The packs we made "should" have performed well (as they did in testing) but they didn't.  Back to the drawing board and workbench...
~We did not provide basic RTO training.  Although everyone did well, and especially so considering that some folks had not been formally trained, a bit of "RTO 101" should be taught.
~Trainees received exposure to, but not sufficient time with, the R-105M. 


The Ugly:

~Highly organized saboteurs slid past the fire watch and collapsed the GP Medium on us while we slept.
~The R-105M will provide the comms guy endless fun in mysterious troubleshooting.  Luckily, we're gaining knowledge and making things less mysterious.  This knowledge could never be gained without actual field deployment of the radios.  I think I'll make a divining rod out of the broken Kulikov.


Fixes:

~I'm thinking along the lines Stagg suggested for power problems- "AEG-style" packs that are soldered together into a battery.  This would eliminate those pesky springs and contacts that are apparently a problem.  (I still don't think the rechargeable cells are the issue).  Assuming a pack built that way can be charged on an AEG charger...hmm...
~Address Basic RTO Procedures.  This can start with written material, but ultimately needs practice.
~Get the radio sets in more people's hands, as often as possible.

[airsoftbwa]

i had a great time and learned alot about the radios! I cant wait for another training session

[abica]

Glad to hear it!  Grant, you did a great job!  I didn't expect tooooo much out of a fresh recruit who also happens to be the young pup on this board, as well as SLAP's whipping boy, but keep showing initiative like that and you'll be up to speed pretty darn quick.  Keep on those grades so you make mom happy! 

Now you've gotten a little taste of what EW is like.  Multiply that by 20, and you have an idea of the fun we'll have in March.  Oh...Stagg's leading the NVA...make that a factor of 30 

[airsoftbwa]

Glad to hear it!  Grant, you did a great job!  I didn't expect tooooo much out of a fresh recruit who also happens to be the young pup on this board, as well as SLAP's whipping boy, but keep showing initiative like that and you'll be up to speed pretty darn quick.  Keep on those grades so you make mom happy!  (you'll have more than mom angry at you if you screw up the grades)   

Yes being the youngest guy (and carrying the heaviest radio....twice ) is hard and being the youngest guy at EW events is even harder but i tried really hard and did it, and yes grades will not be a problem 

[abica]

Just think of the weight of a full US infantry loadout...yikes. 

Sections will have to learn that the RTO might slow 'em down a little, and people are gonna need to lend a helping hand once in a while to the guy who's the link to Higher.  I wonder what the best way to do that is?  (Sure, I can add an evil grin here, I've humped a 105)

[coyote]

I will never, ever trust a NATO tent EVER again. Nothing boogles my mind more at 6 am as to why the tent is bright & I am getting wet. Then trying to figure out why I was outside.

Learing the in/puts of the radio kinda stuck. I think a lil more time with it & I should know how not to blow one up.

I was kinda disapointed with the range on the 392's. I had a miscomception after EWII that they had better range than that.

But the issues I see were the basic RTO stuff. I think Grant did a good job of picking up on things during the day mission with having stuff fed to him. Also on the day mission, it might have been better if we were not all dropped off along the same road. We all ened up bunched together which prevented us from being able to figure out what we could do with the 392's.

I think my biggest surprise was being able to look at a map & have most of what I have been taught come back to me.

[Dozer]

This was my first Official E.W. training event. All I can say is It was a blast. The comms class was very informative ( I now can classify the battle buses stereo as a continuous tuning radio,must be a Russian design ) and now feel confident I can hump & operate a PRC 77 in most conditions .

The night op (EW style..read no light what so ever) was a very new experience for me. As I have never been comfortable relinquishing complete command and responsibility for my wellbeing and safety in those conditions. It went rather well.

 At this point I must give our PL: Houli a personal citation for leadership abilities. This man balances the needs and importance of the objective against the safety and wellbeing of his men. In my opinion this is one of the hallmarks that distinguishes a good leader. Houli you have earned my respect and trust but please, no more cliffs .

 I also give compliments to Warnik our assistant PL/RTO. His dedication to proper radio SOP was outstanding.
  I thought he was going to cry when the decision was made to break CEO&I... "I worked so hard"...
Back story: Warnik spent a lot of time compiling complex messages( because of my ankle and impending weather) with our limited CEO&I to convey a change of the pickup point.

Last but not least, Pie who took drag and was our anchor quite literally a few times. Thank you.

I shall let someone else describe the event( that I dub the great tent fall of 09) Sunday. It was a blast.
Oh yea, note to self on Battle bus SOP: Always secure your Houli as he has a tendency to roll

[Houli]

 

That may require installing a dedicated Houli strap.

[pie_rocks]

Thanks Dozer, I had a blast and learned a lot.  I would also like to personally thank Houli for putting up with my rather large lack of experience navigating during the day.  I feel confident that every time I will go to an EW training that I will come back with some knowledge.  Thanks again to everyone that made it happen.

[aswayze]

Comms I AAR
   
The Plan:

• 
     Swayze and Cochran show up on Friday early and set up base camp.  Hopefully, have all major structures up and ready to go before main body shows up Friday evening. 
  
     Saturday Morning @09:00 classes start
  
  RF theory taught by Hoober
  Radio Legal taught by Kelley
  Basic Radio features taught by Swayze
  CEOI/SOI taught by Tascabe
   
  Lunch was to be an East German walking ration
  
  After lunch we were to split into two groups and teach the specific radios for the sides in question.  On the EB side, Abica would teach the R105M and Brett would teach the R-392.  On the NATO end Hoober would teach the PRC-25/77 and Swayze would teach the PRC-68.   
  
  Prior to dinner, a practical application daytime exercise was to be carried out with the students breaking into groups and deploying into the field with radios operating at or near the fringes of reasonable range so that students would get to see some of the phenomenon’s discussed in the lectures plus actually get hands on with the radios themselves.   
  
  Dinner was to be prepared by Hoober
  
  After dinner, night mission planning followed by the night mission itself again with a focus on placing the radios in difficult to use positions so that students could put to practical use the information taught. 
  
  Sunday morning breakfast was to be served by Tascabe before splitting the classes again to allow training on the R107 and R107M radios for the East Bloc while NATO learned the RT-70 and PRC-10 radios. 
  
  After that, we were to deploy two different types of long wire antennas to use as a demo of directional wire antennas.  Abica was to use a long wire beam antenna while Hoober was to deploy a ½ Rhombic antenna. 
  
  Lastly, a test was to be taken by attendees.

The Performance:

• Hoober had to drop out meaning that some of the lecture stuff plus the cooking had to change up a bit.   Houli did a bang up job on dinner for a guy who got very short notice.
  
  Lectures I think went very well.  I was concerned that the material might be a bit dry and dull but everyone at least seemed really interested and engaged by it. 
  
  Walking ration went off just as planned, again
  
  After lunch the sides split up and the individual training commenced on the sets themselves.  I gave a fairly truncated classes on the 25/77 and 68 just because they are in fact fairly simple to use and I wanted the guys to be doing field work with them rather than sitting around listening to me talk about them. 
  
  Afterwards, the NATO guys kitted up for some walking and as they were about to take off the East Bloc also hustled up at the last minute and caught a lift into the field as well. 
  
  Daytime practical apps worked pretty well although most groups were cut off short to get back in time for dinner and the East Bloc guys who had the 392 radios all ended up traveling with units equipped with R-105M radios so little use was made of the 392 and as such no data was collected on it’s range and effectiveness. 
  
  Dinner came off well after a little hustling to get the fire unit stuffed under something that would hold a pot.
  
  Night mission planning went pretty well.  Patrol leaders seemed to do a pretty good job of figuring out what they were up against and planning the best way to get the mission done. 
  
  Actual practical application night missions went ok although there were some minor injuries sustained.  (rolled ankles and minor cuts)
  
  Everyone bedded down for the night as light rain turned into steady rain and from steady rain into fairly torrential rain.  The GP Medium was set up over the gravel driveway so that it would have a fairly flat and solid floor but the stakes were set out on the grassy areas beside the driveway.  The stakes, 12 inch steel pins, were driven in pretty well but once the ground grew saturated the stakes gave way and the tent came down
  
  Much useful class time on Sunday morning was instead turned into damage control time as the tent was set back up and all of the soaked gear was moved here and there.    Getting a late start, all we managed to teach was the application of the beam antenna without actually deploying a demo beam antenna.     
  
  In the end, the Deuce wound up being the most useful place to run tests so we did our final exams in the Deuce before striking camp and endexing.

Issues/fixes:

• Lecture time went better than I had expected.  I was concerned about being able to cover this material without boring everyone to death so care had been taken not to kill everyone with lecture time.  In fact, I think further lecture time would have worked out better.
  
  Insufficient supplies of operable radios.   Our inventory of radios is growing but is still fairly low.  Cost and maintnence on these things is a real bear and getting enough radios in hand to actually put one in the hands of each student as we discuss the individual radio set is not an easy goal to achieve.   None the less, this was without a doubt one of the biggest impediments to getting everyone the hands on time they needed.    He fix for this is simply time… We cannot just run down to Best Buy and get these things, so it will just take us a while to actually get our hands on enough of them to do ourselves any good. 
  
  We could have included a section on basic radio procedure but given that this is generally covered elsewhere, we left it out.  In retrospect, we should have included this since there were a number of fairly new attendees on hand and even a brief lecture would have helped a great deal. 
  
  Dry Fork Campground was a fairly ideal base location.  It had water on site, decent facilities, very nice pit toilet and trash dumpster.  It also offered closer access to roads than the CR354 operation area, something that is very important to radio operational classes since it is hard to walk out of the range of these radios in a reasonable time frame.  On the downside, the campground was quite crowded with horse packers and there was the expected hootenanny that comes with all of that.   Fix may be to operate up at Boydsville and just get water from and drop trash at Dry Fork instead.
  
  GP Medium stakes are obviously a priority.  Odd thing is, many of the places that sell mediums offer the stakes that we were using as “upgrades” since they are generally sold with the even less satisfactory green camo net stakes.   Christopher, Terry and I have all discussed this at length and have determined that we should get our mitts on some of the wooden stakes to try out and/or if we get lucky enough to find them get some of the much nicer antenna stakes.    Other obvious one Terry pointed out is to not share stakes on the side ropes.  Terry always sets his up with 1 rope per stake and reinforces his camo net stakes with long concrete anchors, also a very good solution.   Christopher also pointed out that the side ropes on the mediums were fairly short and he had seen some tents fitted with longer ropes that might help out with the stake pulling problem. 
  
  The GP Mediums canvas was not sufficiently water proofed.  I had never owned a duck canvas tent that leaked till this one came along.  I was not even sure that was possible…  I had put 5 galllons of Thompsons Water Seal on it prior to the LLC but that seems to have not made the difference I had hoped it would.   Terry used Nikwax on his with good results and I have also heard of good results from Canvak either way, I need to get the medium recoated before we take it out again.  I’ll see what Bass Pro and Cabelas carries so that I can waterproof it when I put it up to dry.
  
  Lack of accessories for the PRC-77 radio meant that I could not send teams out equipped with Mast antennas or long wires to play with other antenna options.   We are still shopping for these, they are not always easy to find at reasonable prices. 
  
  Lack of problems with the PRC-77 meant that teams deployed with PRC-77 radios had no opportunities to deal with PRC-77 problems.  Hopefully, we can just keep on having this issue but if we do end up with field issues it might be worth our time to manufacture some problems during the training process to insure RTOs know what to do about them. 
  
  Battery problems with the R105M radios cost us plenty of time plus of course some reliability.  I really thought we finally had this one whipped with the D-cell adaptors but it looks like we still have some room for improvement. 
  
  R-392 radios are still very much an unknown quantity.  The teams with R-392 radios co-locating with the R105M equipped teams plus sending out both an R105M and a R392 on each night patrol mean that we still do not have much information about the 392.   Perhaps Cox and Hornstra can kick in a little info here? 
  
  The R105M radio at the base camp during the night maneuvers was sort of acting up.  Most comms for both teams ran off of NATOs PRC-77.  The PRC-77 had both a mast antenna and a good earth ground while the R105M was operating from a table with just a Kulikov most of the time so this is not really a fair comparison.  Had Abica and Brett had a little less fiddling around to do on it they may have had time to drive a ground stake and employ their mast antenna as well. 
  
  Vehicle type ground mount antenna seemed to give unsatisfactory performance.  Further testing of this is required.
  
  AM-598U amplifier/power supply for the PRC-10 had been converted to 110V by the previous owner.  Obviously, the rest of the world finds 110VAC house power easier to find than 24VDC power.  My plan had been to simply employ an inverter and run it off of a 12 volt battery but in the field we rapidly learned that the inverter generated enough RF noise on it’s own to drown out any incoming signals.  We could operate the PRC-10 off of the generator but that is obviously a PITA.  I am going to need to trade my AM-598 off to someone who has one that is still set up for 24VDC operation.  The PRC-10 with it’s nice amplified external speaker would have been a real bonus during all of the field exercises. 
  
  Due to time constraints on day 2 the Type 884, RT-70, and PRC-10 radios were not covered.  While this obviously sucks, it is not the end of the world since in all reality we are probably better off teaching these in Comms II anyhow since they are for all intents and purposes, interim radios that are likely to be replaced in a few years once better options show up.   Additionally, the final amp is out on the PRC-10 so it was not transmitting  and with the vehicle antenna acting up, it is not likely that the RT-70 would have given a particularly satisfactory showing either.   In retrospect, the Type 884 COULD be taught first when we teach East Bloc radios simply because we have plenty of them and they are by far the easiest sets to learn on while still retaining most of the same functionality of the R105M. 
  
  Knowing what we know now, we could have worked smarter rather than harder on the night patrols.  We probably should have sent two teams from each side out to seek a high point to run radios from then use that high point to dispatch out small 2 man patrols to do link up operations equipped with the R392, PRC-68, and FSE-38/58 radios.  Doing so would have given more people an opportunity to get hands on with the systems in addition to actually employing some layering to our radio net as it is actually designed to operate.   It is easier to see that now in retrospect. 

All in all, I think everything went pretty well.  Judging by the test results, you guys seemed to learn a great deal and we are a good ways down the path of having solid radio comms for EW3.  Thanks to all who attended! 

 

[warnick]

I got out there late saturday afternoon, but from what i experienced it was one of the best EW training events i've been to.  that might be because for me it was mostly a land nav/ radio etiquette refresher/ practice.  I had a great time out there this weekend.

problems:

GP medium

fix: already discussed

readio ettique and protocal got a little sloppy or non-existent at times. ( houli you will never touch my radio again)  

fix: this one is simple. teach or at least review how to speak over a radio.  I think everone would benefit from this.


i think that is all that can be fixed. i have plenty of complaints about the horse tracks and horse crap along the trails, but that's how it goes.
Stagg when are those pictures going up?

[misha]

Abica...I just so happen to have a "spare" Koulikov for a 105
Came from Belgium in a package as lagnappe...
Sounds like things went well.

Personally, I think a few of us just need to take a few of these radios with lots of battery power and do vehicle born "clinical" range testing i.e. 105 - 105, 392 - 105 and 392 to 392.  Record the info and build up some tables of info on them prior to the next commo class.

That would help with a lot of the "knowledge base"...

I know the 392's work, and I know they work well when they work, Abica can back me up on that.  We've heard crickets and frogs in the background from almost a km away THROUGH the jawbone mic pressed against my fat head! 

[tascabe]

Which - technically means they do not work - they are jawbone mics and you should not hear any external noise.

Additionally - we were running them and ~4km away - not 1.

[misha]

I meant the transmission that Abica and I were doing with the "frogs" in the background was about 1km.
Whether they "technically" don't work as a jawbone, they still work great!  -If you use them correctly.
I still say we need to make sure that all RTO's have "manly voices" so that they transmit better...you need some gravel in your gullet to really tx good on those sets!