N1CC MARS-Army Experiences

This webpage was last updated on December 16, 2007

This page provides notes on N1CC's MARS-Army efforts from 1956-2004.

In 1958 the Northern California MARS area coordinator was Hal W6JDN and he was the ARRL SCM also. In his MARS role he coordinated the provision of operators to the Presidio of San Franciso MARS Station, A6USA during the Sacramento River floods of 1958. I was able to speed a week at A6USA acting as net control and traffic handling for messages that were official to health-and-welfare traffic from mobile MARS members in the flood area. My first MARS callsign was AA6SXX.

I used my first MARS callsign, AA6SXX from 1958 until 1964. Mostly training from 1956-1960 taking part in Sixth Army MARS operation.

When I joined the US Army in 1960 I was sent to the Army Signal Training Center and School at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The normal school took 16 weeks, I passed the first 8 weeks of school on the first day in class by sending and receiving morse code at 30 wpm. That was the highest speed they could test. From that time until the class was scheduled to graduate I attended and tested out of most technical coursework, having to take the crypto training. That gave me several weeks working part time at the Fort Gordon MARS station.

After graduating I had the opportunity to spend some time at WAR (Pentagon) and then was stationed in Florida for three years in sub-tropical radio communications, I participated in 4th Army MARS nets and enjoyed the sun and sand during my "off" time.

In 1964 I was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas and operated Army MARS There, in what was then "5th Army MARS. I was there about six months. I then went to Germany (The Federal Republic}and my callsign for MARS became AE1LA ... to go with my German Ham Call of DL4LA. I participated heavily in Army MARS, and established a club station at the Battalion Headquarters. I worked closely with DL5NC, Walt (K5SXO) who is now retired and living on Lake Texoma about 100 miles north of my Texas location.

In 1967 I was transferred to Fort Hood, Texas. I became A5QGZ and later AAM5QGZ and then AAM5LA. I left active military service in December 1968. In January-March 1968 I attended school for the Army at Fort Devens, MA. I again tested out of the first 12 weeks of the course the first day, and was assigned to the MARS station AA1KBO until my class would catch up with my skill level. During that time I took part in over 1,000 MARS phone patches from AA1KBO to US Forces deployed in the Republic of Viet Nam.

January 1968 found me in Dallas Texas, a civilian working for the Army Reserve and I was active in 4th Army, later reorganized as 5th Army MARS. I was very active, and became the alternate 5th Army MARS RTTY Rebroadcast Station, Bill A5VSD (now AA5WM) was the primary, and I owe a lot of respect and thanks to Bill for his help getting me set up to be his alternate. In 1979 I stopped operating MARS.

From 1979-Present I have not been involved with MARS. My main reason was that the Army had decided to remove the words "in support of Amateur Radio" from the Army Regulation covering MARS. I understand that those words are now back into MARS-ARMY, and will probably become active again in MARS as a result. For many years, George Hart, W1NJM,was the ARRL "Mr. MARS". When I went to HQ to be Deputy to Ellen, W1YL, George would retire and I would become the ARRL DCM. Not all things come true, and I left ARRL in 1979 to pursue a career in telecommunications that finally melted down at the end in 2005. Now, in semi-retirement I can once again support MARS - only since the command objective once agains calls for MARS to support Amateur Radio!