581st Sig. Co. on Hill 775 (1951)

Hill 775 Radio Relay Shack

This is the shack where the radio transmitters and receivers are located. We borrowed the windows from a local bombed out building. The antennas are up on top of the hill in back. The road comes up just to the left and over the rise. There is a large flat place there to park the trucks. When you are on duty in the radio shack you have to listen for anyone calling your location. They talk to you on channel one. When the line goes down you have to determine which relay is out. So they start calling out each relay in order until someone doesn't answer. When you are out and we were out at times everyone jumps to get us back on line. Lives may be at stake. Some times you have a power generator failure.

That is easy. You start up a new unit, wait a few minutes to let it warm up and switch it on line. Both transmitters and receivers were vacuum tube sets.This is before transistors. You try to find out if a tube has burnt out and replace it. Often the final amplifier on the transmitter has gone flat. If that is the case, you replace the tube and tune it up again. If you have to replace a set then it is a bigger job to tune it to the correct frequency. Then you repair the old one after you are back on the air.