I can still remember the days of stringing field wire (the stuff they used for the field phones) from military sets practicing making antennas in case the station took a hit in combat.
Most of the guys in class did not pay whole lot of attention to these classes and how to compute the lengths needed for each freq. I thought it was interesting and that was before I was a ham.
When it came to getting the antenna up in the air they told us that if we needed something to help throw it up in the trees that the bayonet could work well for that purpose.
From what I have found out they don't teach anyone this type of stuff anymore and in the Army there is no such thing as a dedicated radio operator anymore.
I became an instructor down the road at Ft Huachuca, AZ not too long after arriving here on my first tour of duty after Radio School (05B) at Ft. Ord.
Taught CW for a little while, map reading, wire integration (like phone patches) and the operation of the PRC-25, the VRC-42-47, GRC-19 and the GRC-106 radio sets.
in 1967-68 most of the trainees that we taught had a 90% chance that they were going to Viet Nam right out of school. Most of course at the time were drafted at the time like I had been. When I graduated there were 5 in the class that did not go that way and I was one of them.
I had seen a ham station about 5 years before the Army but it was the Army training and a little boot legging on the bands with hams that got me interested in the hobby. You would have been amazed how many military radio ops were on the ham bands.
Many of the instructors at the course I taught at were hams prior to entering the service. One was also the NCOIC of the MARS station which I ran phone patches at for the guys in Viet Nam in our off time.
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