From: "K4YZ" on Fri,Apr 22 2005 2:34 pm

wrote:
From: "bb" on Thurs,Apr 21 2005 4:50 pm

K4YZ wrote:
According to his eHam profile, Toddie is an...

ARMY MARS MEMBER!

QUOTE

I am a member of the following ham radio clubs...
Army M.A.R.S. Christian County Amateur Radio Club (CCARC)

UNQUOTE

Good thing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" doesn't apply to MARS, eh,
Toddie...?!?!

Steve, K4YZ

Steve, what's it to you? You have no understanding of MARS.

The planet, the candy bar, or MILITARY Affiliate Radio
System?

"Sorry, Hans, MARS IS amateur radio."

Poor Stevie still thinks that hams started it and
run it, too.

And here's yet ANOTHER lie that Leonard H. Anderson ahs to account
for...

Tsk, tsk, tsk. The UNITED STATES ARMY said that THEY
started MARS. I just repeated it. No lie at all. :-)

Don't get too angry with those typos like "ahs."

Or is that some kind of TN accent?

I never said they (Amateurs) started it. You are welcome to try
and locate the post wherein you insist I did.

You ARE going to say that at the end of your "reply."

I didn't say they "ran" it. You are welcome to try and locate
the
post wherein you insist I did.

Tsk, tsk, tsk...YOU said "MARS IS amateur radio."
Put that way, the only interpretation can be that
MARS is "all" about amateurs. It isn't.

I DID say that without the Amateur Radio service, MARS would not
exist. This still remains true to this day.

Untrue. MARS did NOT "begin" with amateurs but rather
the U.S. military. The ARMY to be exact.

MARS exists because the DoD says that MARS exists.
Each major branch of the U.S. military maintains
their own MARS headquarters. MARS continues to
function with or without any civilian volunteers.
That is referencible by documents outside of the
ARRL. [the ARRL does not run MARS]

I'm not "enobling" myself for having shown that I was a previous
MARS member, Lennie. Those are facts. It validates My knowledge and
experience in MARS that substantiates my assertion that without
Amateur
Radio, MARS would cease to exist.

MARS was formed by a few members of the U.S. Army
prior to World War II. The purpose of this small
Army function was to get civilian radio amateurs
interested in military communications and "possibly"
contribute to the state of the art of military
communications. That was a rather grandiose view of
the few in that first MARS organization (under another
name then). In the main, the remainder of the military
(wisely) considered themselves and their mission to be
of importance, especially in the growing hostilities
around the world in the 1930s.

There is enough referencible material on the history
of military radio to show that there was LITTLE
influence on military communications by the few
amateurs who had volunteered to be a part of this
Army experiment. The major part of the experiment
was focussed on Public Relations, NOT on the civilian
volunteers actually being any part of military radio
(the military had enough paid civilian employees for
that purpose).

After World War Two, and just after the split-off of
the Army Air Corps to form the United States Air
Force, the new USAF combined with the USA and changed
its name to the present MARS or MILITARY Affiliate
Radio System. Eventually the USN joined in that.
The role of MARS focussed now on the morale issues of
the widespread military spread beyond our shores.
The "phone patches" became a regular part of civilian
volunteer efforts as well as the "radiograms" forwarded
when voice telephone contact could not be made. That
was an excellent service to our military at the time.

By the 1980s the needs for any "phone patches" were
dwindling rapidly. One reason was improved means of
communications for military personnel off-shore. By
the mid-1990s the DSN had spread to U.S. bases off-
shore and was growing at an amazing rate. The DSN or
Digital Switched Network has been described as "the
government's own Internet" and functions the same.
A major difference is that the DSN can connect directly
to the Internet and it is possible for individual
service members in many locations to communicate
directly with their family and friends back home.
Computers have become a part of military operations.

The mission of MARS had shifted to become a sort of
liason between the military and other government
agencies. That served its original post-WW2 role as
a sort of back-up system, an actual affiliate. An
affiliate is NOT part of the day-to-day military
communications system but can "work with it." That
MARS can function on its own, without civilian
volunteers, has been proven in the previous Operation
Grecian Firebolt annual military-government exercises.

You are welcome to list YOUR MARS callsigns, Lennie, and tell us
all about YOUR experiences in the programs....

"Experience" is NOT a requirement. There is much
history of MARS available to anyone who will bother
to look beyond the PR of the ARRL. The Fort Huachuca,
AZ, military website is a good place to investigate
for information. Huachuca is mainly the Army's Military
Intelligence School as well as a hub of military
communications. Huachuca also trains UAV teams for
unmanned aerial reconnaisance (what UAVs are designed
and operated for) and other M.I. skills, including the
center for the last morse code cognition (receiving
only) schooling for the entire U.S. government. MARS
(Army) Hq is a small part of the sum total of Fort
Huachuca activities.

As to actually "working with MARS," station ADA had
one 1 KW FSK RTTY transmitter on tertiary priority for
the MARS facility at Far East Command Headquarters in
Tokyo in the early 1950s. First priority was to the
FEC Commander's aircraft should he be aloft. Secondary
was to back-up of either Anchorage or Seattle radio
circuits, depending on traffic needs. I don't recall
any time that the MARS facility at Pershing Heights
was actually granted use of that one transmitter between
1953 and 1954; they had asked often enough but Control
had the final say. By late 1955 the MARS facility was
moved to Hardy Barracks and they got their own tri-
bander and (perhaps) a better transmitter; Pershing
Heights was given back to the Japanese (it was their
old War Ministry) and the ADA transmitter site increased
to 43 transmitters from 36 and relocated to Camp
Tomlinson (a converted airfield) NE of Tokyo. MARS
messaging had to use regular TTY routings, again in
low priority, even being behind the Red Cross messages
carried over RUAP (the TTY node name used then).

You have the callsigns and dates I was a member. You may verify
my experiences at your leisure.

Irrelevant. MARS existed before Stevie existed. The
DoD DIRECTS MARS. The major service branches all have
their MARS Hqs and all supply information on their
activities. The Army Communicator (from Fort Gordon,
GA) and SIGNAL (from AFCEA, the military-civilian
Armed Forces Communications-Electronics Association)
both have published information in those periodicals.
[archives are available for viewing at their
respective websites] MARS is a *small* part of
military communications, not in the mainstream. The
AFRTS is much bigger and DOES have an extraordinary
number of civilian volunteers (primarily from the
entertainment industry). MARS works with SHARES, the
SHAred RESources of the government insofar as government
radio stations exist (2500 give or take, not part of
AFRTS and not part of regular military communications
nor part of regular civilian-government DSN, AUTOVON,
AUTODIN. et al networking).

As to "Mars," the planet, I've been privileged to view
real-time (in solar system time terms) data and video
arrive from the first successful Mars lander at JPL.
A super-tense time (years before the little rovers)
since that was a definite FIRST then.