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I believe the History you’re
born into doesn’t necessarily limit your history – but it does
define lots of your choices. I was born in the heart of the Great
Depression, grew up in during World War II, and graduated from High School
facing the Korean War Draft. I chose the Air Force and that choice led to
many other of my life’s choices. After spending roughly 3 years of that
enlistment in communications at Lowry Flight Service Center I was looking at
the possibility in Civilian life working for FAA in Air Route Traffic
Control. Unfortunately, my Air Force experience was not on the ‘approved
list’; however, Airline Radio Operator was. If I had 12 months experience
as an Airline Radio Operator I would have the experience to apply with the
FAA. So, when I was released from active duty in December 1955 I was
already enrolled in electronic school in Kansas City; class to begin in
March, 1956. By early January 1957 I had my new, ink barely dry, FCC 2nd
Class Radiotelephone License and off to Dallas, TX to interview with Braniff
Airways for a job as an Airline Radio Operator. (They had the only vacancies
I knew of at the time.)
What I didn’t know, or
failed to comprehend, the Airline Industry was on the threshold of a major
transition in 1957. The Lockheed Electra II turboprops and the Boeing 707
turbojets were being prepared to enter airline service in less than two
years. These two airplanes would largely mark the end of the need for
airline radio operators.
When I began as a Radio Operator with Braniff Airways in
January, 1957 Braniff’s newest planes were the Douglas DC-7C aircraft with
roughly a 350 mph cruising speed. One of the primary functions of the
Airline Radio Operator was to act as a relay between the Company Flights and
the Air Route Traffic Control operators. This was accomplished by taking
the Pilots reports/requests and phoning it to the ARTC Sector Operator, then
relaying the clearance back to the pilot; this could take a number of
minutes depending on the speed of the response from ARTC. ARTC did not have
much direct communications with aircraft in those days. In piston engine
days because of the aircrafts slower speeds this wasn’t as critical as it
would become with the advent of the 400+ mph turboprops and would be totally
unacceptable with the coming near 600 mph turbojet aircraft [ stated
another way: 600mph = 100 miles every 10 minutes!]. It
would be absolutely essential for the Air Route Traffic Control center to be
in constant and instantaneous contact with every flight under their
control. This meant phasing out the ‘middle man’ in the air traffic control
loop. Airlines either maintained their own communications networks or turned
Company communications over to ARINC after that happened. Braniff
maintained its own network but was operated remotely from Dallas only
handling company information thus eliminating all but a few Company
Operators.
But that was yet to come in my time as a radio operator
(1957-1961); we were still receiving requests and delivering clearances.
This function was obviously the highest priority of the job, but certainly a
long way from the only function. I can only speak of Braniff’s
requirements, but expect that they were generally the same throughout the
industry at the time. The requirements varied to some degree on the size of
the Station and the number of flights operated there. In smaller stations
the operator might have to sign off the radio when a flight was arriving or
departing and stand fireguard as they started the engines or perform other
duties, like helping load and unload luggage.
In larger stations, like Midway and Memphis, there was an
Operator on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to handle over
flights, arrivals and departures any time of the day or night. It was also
the Operators duty to assemble and post in the briefing area the various
meteorological data for the pilots to study prior to filing their flight
plans and to gather the dispatch release and other data required to be
attached to the flight release. To this end each station had a weather
teletype that printed the hourly weather reports, the forecasts, wind aloft
reports and winds aloft forecasts as well as Special Reports and Warnings.
These printers functioned at about 60 words per minute, so they were pretty
much running all the time. They were Model 15 Teletype machines but about
the time I left the job they were being replaced with Model 28 machines
which operated at 100 words per minute! Other duties included keeping the
Station logbook and inserting revisions to the Station JEPCO manuals which
contained all the approach data and other information the flight crews would
need for their flight. As well as other duties the local Station Manager
considered to be part of a Radio Operator’s job.
The radio equipment used to
conduct these communications generally varied by the size of the station and
its importance to the network. In all stations there were two types of
transmitters and receivers; HF (high frequency) and VHF (Very High
Frequency). HF was used for communications out of the local area and to
relay messages to the home base in Dallas. Memphis, as best I can recall,
had 3 HF frequencies. The highest frequency (8956 kHz) was used to relay
messages back to Dallas and not normally used by the flights. The middle
frequency (6574.5 kHz) was usually used in daytime to communicate with
flights outside our VHF range. The lowest frequency (3456 kHz) was normally
used at night. These were based on the ‘general’ skip of HF radio. VHF
(130.3 MHz) was only used for flights coming into, going out of, or overhead
our station since VHF is line of site. The actual frequencies listed are
from memory; so don’t quote me on them– that was a very long time ago! All
communication was conducted from the ‘radio room’ which contained the
operator console, teletype machines, and typically had a place for the
pilots to review the latest weather information for flight planning. The
information received over the air was recorded on a specialized typewriter
usually called a “Mill” – it only typed capital letters. They were manual
machines and in the stations that I worked in appeared to be World War
surplus; I’m not certain which war. Some were pretty dilapidated. Do you
remember Woodstock Typewriters?? The transmitters and receivers were
operated over phone lines to their remote location; normally somewhere off
airport property as HF antennas required considerable space. Other duties
included operating the Company teletype equipment (Model 19ASR – punched
tape machines), sending and receiving company messages pertaining to the
operation of the airline. Generally it included arrivals, departure,
position reports that could not be relayed by radio (HF was not always
reliable), air freight, maintenance, operations messages, and any other
communications relating to Airline Operations for that station. About the
only thing we did not routinely handle were reservations messages; in some
smaller stations that too was part of the job.
We also did
minor maintenance on our equipment. Braniff required each Operator to
hold either an FCC 2nd Class or 1st Class Radio
Operator License. Maintenance typically meant replacing a defective
receiver, a fuse, or burned out tube in the transmitter. All heavy
maintenance and routine checks were performed by Ground Radio
Maintenance personnel out of Dallas. A side note – they were Radio
Mechanics – the ‘Technician’ term had not come into vogue back then!
After
Phase Out
In 1961 it was apparent that the coming cutback in Radio
Operators would require far more than my 4+ years seniority to stay on. I
left briefly for an ill chosen job only to have it end in just a few months.
(By the way, referring back to the FAA … when I had 12 months experience
the requirement had increased to 18 months -- at 36 months I finally met
the requirement – but there were no vacancies by then!.)
When I returned to Memphis
Braniff was looking for Radio Mechanics in the Maintenance Department in
Dallas. The requirement was a Radio Telephone 2nd class
license. In the time I was gone there had been several Radio Mechanics
leave Braniff for the FAA to fill some of the vacancies in the emerging Air
Traffic Control Communications Network maintenance areas, thus creating the
Braniff maintenance vacancy I filled. I worked 20 years in maintenance
until the Company’s bankruptcy in May of 1982, thus ending 25 years of total
Airline Experience. When BraniffII emerged I went to work for them for an
additional 3 years in the Flight Simulator Department. In 1987 I left there
for E-Systems in Greenville, TX. I worked there as a Quality Assurance
Engineer on a Classified Government Contract until May 30, 1997 when I
retired. I can’t tell you what I did other than it was related to
aircraft. You can find out a lot about it by watching the 6:00 news --- if
I could tell you what night to watch! Like so much ‘security’ information
-- it all depends on who’s doing the telling as to how much security it
has.
Some
Anecdotes from Radio Operator Days
Shortly after I arrived in Chicago in 1957 I was
breaking in with the operator who was about to leave. He was a great
football fan and so was one of the Convair pilots he knew. The Convair
pilot was coming into MDW and called in over Peoria ..I took the call and it
went something like this: “Chicago, Braniff 562 over Peoria at Doak
Walker’s Number estimating Midway at 24.” Fortunately for me the football
fan, Smoky, was still there because the pilot, Charlie, wasn’t about to give
Doak Walker’s number – any good football fan would know it! Unfortunately I
didn’t have a clue… turns out to be 37. There were a number of real
characters in the airlines as there are in any business, I guess. Another
exchange between Smoky and Charlie occurred another night. Charlie was on a
night flight from Dallas to Denver. They were out over Dalhart, TX and were
calling in a position report. After Dallas took the report, Smoky says
“Watch this,” and keyed the mike and said “Charrrlie!” after a couple
seconds the reply came back “El Smoko Ropo!” Even over the staticy HF they
could recognize each other’s voices. Not exactly proper protocol, but
Charlie didn’t particularly believe in protocol, and Smoky was leaving!
These were some of the minor incidences that occurred now and then.
One time when I was working in FSM during a very
strong thunderstorm I got a call on the Tower intercom -- “Braniff you have
a DC-6 coming over the fence.” We didn’t have DC-6 service in Fort Smith
and I wasn’t aware of any flights within a hundred miles of us. This was
before the days of effective weather radar and satellites. Seems there was a
line of storms along the flight path from MKC and DAL … this flight had
detoured to the southeast to avoid the storms but was still coming up on
more storms ahead, so elected to land at FSM to wait them out; DC-6’s
couldn’t fly over them. As soon as operations got the plane parked, the
pilot came in and was looking at the weather reports and the company TTY
with all the Flight Advisories of delays and mechanical problems that seemed
to occur during bad weather. He said, looking at the mechanical delays, “I
don’t know why they don’t do like I do … tell them it’s my bad back … I’ve
got a yellow streak right up it!” (When it came to flying into severe
weather).
I noticed in my time as a Radio Operator there weren’t nearly
as many ‘Smoky’s’ as there were ‘Charlie’s.’ Seems driving airplanes
attracted some real characters back in those days. I would guess it still
does.
One last incident -- This occurred before
security became so tight -- and long after my Radio Operator job had ended.
I and a friend were going to Hawaii on vacation. She had never been in the
cockpit of an airplane before. It happened that while we were waiting to
board the Copilot came by and was someone I had known for years. He said
after they got to altitude and the seat belt sign off to come on up and
visit. This was a 747. When we reached altitude I asked the Hostess to
call the cockpit and see if it was ok to come up … it was. We went up the
stairs and I knocked on the door, the Flight Engineer opened it and we went
in. You should have seen the look on my friends face … the Pilot and
Co-pilot had Rand McNally Road maps open looking at them. OK to the West
Coast -- but what then??? Well, High Altitude Jet Charts don’t show a lot
of ‘tourist’ detail. They were looking for things to point out to the
passengers. But it sort of looked strange to my friend who was not familiar
with flying!
.End of
article
written by Robert Roll, 2008. |
