581st Radio Relay Co.
in North Korea (1950)

Sad to say but our first station was not successful. Our transmitters are FM. That means we transmit and receive only by line of sight. We transmit in the same frequency as TV in the USA. You must be able to be in direct line of sight with the other stations. We transmit with a power of 50 watts. The maximum range is generally about 50 miles and there can be no mountains in the path. We were never able to establish communications with the other station. So we were ordered to move to another hill. So here we are packing up. Everything on the hill must come down. Everything must be put back into cases. The tents come down. It requires lots of work by everyone. Again the Korean population helps. They are wonderful to us.

TThe civilian population was always most friendly to the United Nations forces and treated us as if we were their liberators. These people are scrounging things we have discarded. We try to pay the helpers with our own money what we have. We are heading out to a new location to start again. Our Lieutenant goes off in the jeep to find out where and what frequencies we are to use. We must also know the azimuth directions of the other stations to point our antennas in the right direction.