GEEIA
Ground Electronics Engineering Installation Agency
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#1 December 25, 2009 21:14:32
- Getchell, Darrell
- Administrator
- From: Midwest City, Oklahoma
- Registered: February 14, 2007
- Posts: 76
Christmas Day, 1969
39 years ago today, TSgt Phil Lickliter and I were performing Emergency Maintenance Assist on the Don Muang RTAFB TACAN. I think we got it restored on air around 7 P.M., and made in back into Bangkok to the Miami Hotel to shower, get a bite to eat and party the rest of the night away. Got the AFTO 88 signed the next day. If you had to be away from home on Christmas, there were worse places to spend it than in Bangkok...
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#2 December 29, 2009 22:37:45
- Hull, Gary
- Member
- From: Raleigh, North Carolina
- Registered: April 28, 2007
- Posts: 10
Re: Christmas Day, 1969
Wow...I had just returned from Udorn for a holiday break the day before. I had a bad cold with congestion and headache and opted to hit the rack rather than see Bob Hope and Raquel Welch perfrom at Korat RTAFB.
One of my first TDY's after arriving in country was to Don Muang to work a recabling job on the TACAN...I'm guessing around August 1969. While in a yellow condition the TACAN went down. I was TDY with several new and/or inexperienced maintenance troops all sent to learn how to recable a TACAN the GEEIA way. Having spent a year at McChord AFB following tech school and before reassignment to the 483rd I think I was the only one of us with real maintenance experience. I immediately jumped in to bring the system back online...trouble-shooting it to a bad tube in the FMO drawer. It was that event that caused Lick to begin sending me on fixit missions as opposed to periodic maintenance missions. I think Trover was our team chief but again, my memory may not be accurate. This was my only trip to Don Muang and it sounds like the Don Muang TACAN had a history of going down...or was it it's proximity to Bangkok that resulted in so much GEEIA attention? 
Last edited by Hull, Gary (December 29, 2009 22:39:18)
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