Richmond Relay Station Richmond Relay - 1969-70 20. Richmond Site Name in Rocks

The Radio Operations building was divided into 3 sections. The largest area was in the middle of the Quonset and held all the racks of VHF and microwave radio equipment. On the end near the AFKN tower was the section for the broadcasting equipment and associated relay gear to send the radio and TV signal south to Taegu and west to Kunsan. SSgt. Rodriguez with EUSA was in charge of all AFKN equipment. On the other end of the building was the small but main section called the Control Room. Here the circuits were broken down to a main frame and control panel similar to Bucket Site but it had only 3 switchboards.

The control room had glass on the two walls viewing the radio equipment, a diesel stove for winter and a couple of UHF radio systems called Vanderbilt Net (call sign "Golf") and Lancer Net (call sign "Falcon"). These systems required radio checks every half hour and were the radio systems used for emergencies because they had battery back- ups and did not need the generators to operate

The site cadre consisted of about 5-6 radio techs, a cook to manage the mess hall and the Site Chief. Duty shifts were always changing and just as you got use to one schedule it would change to another. There were usually 3 radio shifts per day and a vehicle trip to base camp at Taejon. We called it the Ration Run but it accomplished many errands from picking up mail to transporting workers and site personnel back and forth from mountain to town.

While on duty the work included switchboard operation similar to that at Bucket Site but it was not as busy. There was also maintenance and repairs on various radio and test equipment used on the communications gear. Back then most radio electronic systems still used vacuum tubes and resisters. At best they used transistors and diodes but the IC was not part of our equipment then. Although I was trained on some more modern systems while at Ft. Monmouth I never saw them while in Korea.

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