Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Bonus Chapter Part 5 Tipsy 43

So as not to disappoint any readers who are anticipating a story about a slightly drunken episode, let me explain. Tipsy 43 is how we referred to the AN/TPS-43. It is a transportable 3-dimensional air search radar produced originally by Westinghouse Defense and Electronic Division. It completed development in 1963 and entered US service in 1968. By 1974 it was time to turn over support for the radar to the Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC).

My friend John worked in the radar section and was assigned the task of transitioning the AN/TPS-43 drawing package from Westinghouse into the AFLC inventory. The drawing package would theoretically provide the Air force with necessary details to maintain, procure replacement parts for and possibly even competitively procure said parts for the tipsy 43. So, Westinghouse was not necessarily motivated to provide the best possible package, since it could possibly be used by their competitors to furnish parts for which Westinghouse was more than happy to overcharge the government.

Westinghouse was only required to furnish a drawing package for the government to sign off on. It was the government's responsibility to make sure the package was accurate and complete before signing off. This was the task assigned to John.

I met John shortly after he came to McClellan. In fact, he quickly came to everyone's attention as the new lieutenant who had gotten in trouble for decorating his work cubicle with playboy centerfolds. Management made him take them down. I couldn't wait to meet this guy. Turns out we had a lot in common and not just an appreciation of centerfolds and being the new lieutenants bucking the system. We were both electrical engineering graduates from top Southern schools.

There were some differences, John was a graduate of Auburn in Alabama a rival of my school Georgia Tech. John was an ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) graduate whereas I had gone through OTS (Officer Training School) to get my commission. ROTC paid for John's schooling. I had already paid for and received my degree before going to OTS. OTS did do a better job of preparing me to be an officer. John's lieutenant's bars were crooked until I showed him how they were supposed to be worn. John was married while I was single. Yes, this is the same John of the streaking and orienteering adventures I wrote about in an earlier chapter. After almost fifty years and living thousands of miles apart, we still stay in touch and are still friends.

Our management thought we would have a better chance of intimidating Westinghouse into providing a usable package if we made a show of strength by sending two engineers to the drawing review where the final decision on the package would be made. None of the civilians in John's section wanted to go so John asked me. I had no expertise in radar, but I did have a bit of experience in reviewing drawing packages. In fact, I had been to several reviews including for things as diverse as the review for the then in development Solar Optical Observing Network (SOON) a glorified network of high-powered telescopes to detect solar activity that could affect radio communications.

The Tipsy 43 review took place at the Westinghouse plant just south of Baltimore near the BWI airport. When John and I arrived, we were escorted to a large conference room where it became obvious that Westinghouse management planned to use their own intimidation techniques to get the two inexperienced junior engineers to signoff on the drawings as quickly as possible.

The room was filled with over a dozen senior managers and technical staff. The PhDs and VPs all introduced themselves flaunting their credentials and experience in an effort to convince us we were outclassed and being given first class treatment that we should appreciate by complying with their generous guidance.

In my experience, those flaunting credentials do so because they often have little else to offer. Their flaunting was wasted on John and I. We were both immune to intimidation and we both knew we had all the power. They needed our signatures.

They spent the first morning of the meeting explaining their processes for creating and maintaining their drawings to insure configuration control. They assured us the drawings reflected the true configuration of every element of the system right down to the smallest resistor on every circuit board. I smirked, because one thing I'd learn from all the drawing reviews I had attended was that degree of documentation was very unlikely. Demonstrating this to them was going to be fun.

The actual review began after lunch. The procedure they outlined for the review was that we would request at random any subsystem or circuit board and the drawings and item would be brought to us for us to verify.

John asked me if I had any preferences as to where to start. I told him to pick any circuit board that had a power supply on it. I knew such boards would always have a shunting resistor to ground out any power surges that might occur. The thing is, that the value of such resistors is totally unimportant and I was pretty sure that none of the so-called experts in the room would know this fact. A fact that would be common knowledge to anyone who had ever assembled such a circuit board. I learned this when I built my own Heath kit Oscilloscope. I doubted that any of them had ever even soldered a resistor onto a circuit board. I was not even sure they would know which end of a soldering iron to hold.

They got us a board and the accompanying drawing and just as I suspected the shunting resistor was just a random value. It was probably the first one the technician who assembled the board grabbed and of course it was not the value specified on the drawing.

Pretending to be seriously concerned I asked, "How do you explain this?" I said showing them the inconsistency between the value of the resistor on the board and the value specified on the drawing. They went into a panic. We had only just begun and I had identified a discrepancy after they had spent the entire morning assuring us such discrepancies did not exist.

Of course, they had to call in an "expert" to verify that I had correctly read the value of the resistor which is indicated by colored bands on the body of the resistor as everyone who works with such things knows. I was a little surprised that none of their experts currently in the room could do this.

Once it was verified that there was really a deviation, their panic went into overdrive. They were running about sending for more experts and anyone who could explain how this could have happened.

John and I just leaned back and exchanged secret grins while feigning devastating concern to those running about. This may have been the most fun I ever had in the review of a drawing package.

Eventually, they found a technician who explained to them that the value of that particular resistor really didn't matter. They then had the technician explain it to us. We smiled at him, listened attentively and nodded our heads as if seriously considering his explanation. We said we would have to consider this, but for now we would just continue and see what else surfaced.

The review continued for a couple more days and no more inconsistencies were found. John and I left a much humbler group of experts than those that had greeted our arrival. We eventually signed off on the package. Yes, John and I both got a little tipsy to celebrate.