The RAM - Vol 56. Page 19

Vol 56

Page 19

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Your Say!

While the Association does not necessary agree or disagree with everything on this page,

we do respect the right of everyone to have their say.

Vietnam Cap.

My name is John Davies and I served in the RAAF from 1962 to 1990. I joined as an electrical apprentice at Wagga Wagga in 1962 and completed my service as a Wing Commander Electrical Officer at HQSC in 1990. During my service, I served in Vietnam in 1966 initially at RFTV and later 35 SQN. I would like to see if you have any stock of the RAAF Vietnam Veteran cap? If so I would like to purchase one if possible. I currently live in Virginia USA but can pay for the item either by cheque or electronically as I have an Australian NAB cheque account. If the cap cannot be forwarded to the USA, I could provide an Australian address to forward the cap to.

I was also on the ground crew which was sent north in August 1966 to Ba To to extricate Caribou A4-173 which had crashed. I believe I might be the only person who has photographs of parts of the recovery. I will attach an example of the series. Yours, John Davies

(If you want one of these caps, just let us know. They cost $28.50 posted to an Australian address – tb).

173 is now on display at the Caloundra Air Museum.

109 RTC Reunion.

SQNLDR Rob Seabrook says: “Re Vol55, Page18, Comments: I thought I could provide some useful info to Tim Corcoran regarding his proposed 109RTC reunion. I'm afraid I know nothing about 109 (a bit before my time - I was on 5/90 RTC 1990/91), but I was at Laverton a few weeks ago so thought advice on what's left there (and more importantly what's not) might be useful.

The Radschool buildings are still in use, now by the Director-General of Technical Airworthiness. Radschool moved out long ago to Wagga (~1994?), and then was disbanded when the training of communications/electronics technicians (descendant of RADTECHG) moved to a shared arrangement with the Navy at HMAS Cerberus. All airside functions at Laverton are long gone, including the runway which is largely now under housing developments. An Airmen's Mess still operates, but I'm not convinced it would have been the same building in 1977? A number of the airmen's accommodation buildings have been removed, but I think these were built in the '80s anyway. The cinema is still in use as a conference centre, but no longer screens movies. The SGTs' Mess was demolished ~2 years ago, and the snakes now share a combined facility with the officers in the original Officers' Mess.

Visiting Laverton for reminiscing might be enjoyable for 109, but they need to be prepared for the significant change that has occurred even in my 25-year recollection. Cheers,

You can see more info on Laverton today HERE.

Ouyen Servo.

Bill Sinclair says: “I have attached a photo of a service station at Ouyen in South Australia. When I went through my time at Wagga, many of us would head home at every opportunity. The trip to Adelaide would take us along the Sturt Hwy across the wonderful and scenic Hay plains where at night you could see the headlights of an approaching car at least half an hour before you passed. From there it was on through Mannum ( I think ) and the punt that could keep you waiting for an hour or so. The other option was to head south from Balranald and on through Ouyen.

At Ouyen there was a service station where the owner slept on site and was happy to fill your tank at any hour. Just tap on the window and out he would come. Whether this was just for servicemen I couldn’t say. Recently I travelled through that area and took a photo of what I think may have been that service station.

Considering the was back in the late 60’s the memories could be bit off

Love to hear of anyone who remembers this and if I may have the right place.”

Pilot course photos.

Stephen Wessels writes: “I checked out your collection of photos of Pilots Courses, well done, except you only have the NAVY photo for Number 83 Pilots Course, any idea where the RAAF photo is? We were there on No 83! Would the photo be missing as Perry Kelly was killed straight out of Pilots Course in Butterworth?”

(Stephen, sorry, at the moment that’s all I have. I’ve been trying to get access to the course photos held by the RAAF but they keep putting up road blocks. I want to do other courses as well (Radschool, Nav etc) so I’ll keep trying – tb)

Never criticise your husband’s faults.

It may have been those little imperfections which stopped him from getter a better wife.

114 MCRU.

Geoff Mayhew writes: “Further to my photos and story about 114MCRU: I am presently sitting in a bar on Via Guglielmo Marconi in Verona and being here suddenly reminded me of an old notice that used to be around in the 60s attached to the Marconi Myriad Computers at 114MCRU. Computers in those days all had banks of lights and switches, each lamp was connected to a data line, and one could see the state of the various registers, addresses and the data passing through them. It was mesmerising to watch.

These days, the 3 leds on a PC indicating power, the hard disk doing something and shiftlock, is about as much as we can keep up with because the data is moving so quickly any visual indications would be a blur, but back then we could glean a lot from those blinking lamps to tell us what was going on. The Marconi Myriad even had a loudspeaker attached to one of these lamps so we also had an audio indication of the state of affairs; something that continued into the 80's with dialup modems.

Some wags at IBM in the U.S in the 50s wrote this notice which spread to the UK and beyond in the 60s, and would be posted on the mainframes and mini computers but why the faux German, complete with the germanic font Fraktur is not too clear. Here is that notice.

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