Well I just got some pics back from the deployment i was on about a month ago. Just thought I'd share some pics. You guys can kinda see how crappy it was cuz we were in the middle of nowhere and you can see the stuff I work on, and some of the friendly critters who join us out there. Enjoy!



this is a camel spider

us setting up our Air Surveillance Radar

This is the Comm section setting up the Air Traffic Control Tower

another friend we made out there (rattlesnake)

me and a few of the other radar techs

Wow! Thanks for sharing!! I could do without seeing those "friends" though. ;)

So what exactly do you do? I know you said "radar tech", but what is that?

here's the Nav Aids site, that's their beacon

Ya I'm a Radar Technician. Went through 1 1/2 years of military schooling on electronics, specializing in radars. My job is to pretty much maintain the radars. While its sitting here in Yuma, it's not really being used. The gear sits on base and everyday we do maintenance to it, like preventative maintenance stuff. We do allignments. When all a sudden something breaks or one of the radars isn't working, then we gotta troubleshoot the radar and fix the problem. And trust me, we have problems all the time because of all the sand that gets into places. We also pack up the radars and set them up whenever we deploy. We also maintain and troubleshoot the MMD's which are the lil TV like screens that each Controller has and stares at when controlling the aircrafts. We have 2 radars, one is a surveillance one which just spins and puts a nice lil radar sweep on the MMD's. The other one is a precision approach radar. Basically if the weather is so bad that the pilots can't see, then the controller will guide them in with that radar. I can't think of anything else to say at the moment, so imma just keep uploading some more pics!

Here is a pic of the LAAD detachment that was attached to us. They are our protection. If someone is flying in to blow us up, the LAAD lights em up with missles!

here is a pic of the whole LAAD detachment. and also u can kinda see a bigger pic of our site, its all cammie netted though. You can see our tan tents to the very left, that's where we slept

a helicopter flying around our site

Harrier taking off

me in front of the surveillance radar

me in a 7-ton truck and that's my Master Sergeant, he's the maintenance chief.

another one of the locals

harriers lined up

me in the 7-ton truck, can't really see my face though. Ya i gotta license for these bad boys!!!!!! you should see the size of the turbo on em too!!

last one im puttin up. I have a lot more and they are much clearer, but i had to shrink em to put em on here. This is the only pic of our precision approach radar i had. you can barely see it but i put an arrow on there so you know which one it is.

Thanks for sharing! Very cool to see :D

I love harriers. Too bad they are Marine and Royal Navy only......

more pics..more pics :banana:

your master sergeant makes me not want to join the army, angry looking fella. haha

I hate doing this, but it is one of my pet peeves, The Msgt (Master Sergeant) in the picture is a marine, Just look at his cover and you will see the Marine exclusive Eagle Globe and Anchor. Just because someone is in the military doesnt automatically make him in the Army.

Good pictures. If this was a deployment where you were out in the middle of nowhere, where did the tarmac and hangars come from?

If you want to host the high res pics somewhere I will give you upload info to my site and we can make a gallery if you want.

And Royal Air Force. They had em out in Kuwait when I was there.

Also about the hangars. Yes there are hangars there, and a normal ATC tower. But I can guarantee you that this was the middle of nowhere. It's a tiny ARMY base called YPG. That's all that is there. The population of that base is prolly about 200. And we weren't even on the base really, we were just at their lil airfield. The base is where the ARMY jump school trains. So there are a couple hangars for their little prop airplanes. The base has a grocery store, a qwikemart thing, and one tiny dinner called the Cactus Cafe. That's it. And that was all about 15 minutes away from where we were. To me, that is the middle of nowhere. No showers, no bathrooms (they supplied us with portajohns tho!!), MRE's for food, sleep on a cot on a dirt floor, had a few sandstorms out there, it just isn't a whole lotta fun. But it was the last one I'll ever have to go on!!! YEAH OK WHAT!!!!

also my master sergeant is pretty cool. I guess it was just the pic that makes him look angry. He was a drill instructor awhile back. And when we go on deployments, he whips out his DI hat and wears it around. Also about the pics, if you gotta place i can put the big ones then lemme know man. I also have some keg stand pics of me if anyone wants to see.

its from my party for getting promoted

the sunset out there was kinda cool!

here's the airfield we were at. This is all that was out there besides us.

both our radars

tower after it was fully setup

sandstorm

guy in charge of me

whatta hard worker huh?

50 cal on the LAAD hummer

we got attacked by F-5's

our Det Commander, same guy who preaches SAFETY to us all the damn time. Isn't it Ironic, don't ya think?

C-17 landing

maybe give you a better perspective as to how big C-17's are

c-130 taking off

its nice to see 'deployment pics' other then from cnn.com, i bet the c-130's are huge, i have yet to be in one but next year i plan to ride in one for JROTC (at my school), do you have a current military rank ?

do i have a rank? haha i sure hope so, can't be in the military without one. I'm a corporal. And C130's are pretty big, but the c-17's are way bigger