One of my more interesting Management Jobs!!!!

I have been thinking, what about you ask? Whenever I say that my wife or one of my children will say, that is what I smell burning, ha ha!

Anyway, I have been thinking about what I did during my work years, I am talking about the years I worked for the Department of Defense as the manager for a group of designers, engineers, and draftsman that were charged with designing a completely self contained Radio Broadcast Station, including power generators, 500 ft. Antenna, 100,000 watt radio transmitter complete with air conditioned broadcast studio. One caveat, it all had to be transportable by helicopter, truck, or train, and able to be put up and taken down by a team of 6 people in less then 5 hours. Oh! And it all had to be able to survive a 10 foot free fall drop from said helicopter.

Your next question would be, could it be done, and did we do it? Answer, yes and yes, and we did it very well indeed.

Who was it for? The United States propaganda warfare department during the Vietnam War, that's who. Upon completing the 2nd prototype, it was picked up and shipped over to Vietnam and placed in service.

In the meantime we were preparing documents , drawings, and blueprints for placing the job out for bid to several interested contractors.

Within a week of the 2nd prototype being placed in service, we received orders to build several replacement modules immediately, using all available resources including overtime to get them made. Where was all of this taking place you ask? Well it was taking place in Sacramento Army Depot in Sacramento, California.

Before my team had completed the bid package, we wound up building a total of 4 complete Propaganda Warfare Radio Broadcast Stations for the Vietnam War.
In addition, we wound up building or repairing at least 8 modules damaged by gunfire, grenade, and mortars.

I was to find out about 4 years later, that the Broadcast Stations were very effective in the war effort which explained why we wound up building so many units, even though we were only meant to design and build to prototypes.

For those of you that may be wondering, No, none of these stations were used in the making of “Good Morning Vietnam” starring Robin Williams.

Out of curiosity I went "googling" to see if I could find any information or pictures on the above mentioned Radio Stations without any luck. I suspect the items are still classified as secret, go figure.

"(C) Copyright by Victor Winebrenner"