This past week...

...was a tough one. This really has nothing to do with art, motorcycles, dogs, beer, music or the like, but I thought I would post. As some of you may or may not know, I work for the Army and have so for the past 18 years. I spend alot of my time working in an office type environment, not getting to experience much of the tactical side of military communications these days. For the people that don't know the difference between tactical and non-tactical, Google it. About 5 months ago I was sucked into a mission because of my communications expertise and its completely working with tactical equipment. I'm really enjoying it, but unfortunately its requiring me to spend a week at a time away from home every month. Hard for me and my family, but we deal...anyway, here are some pictures and a brief explanation. I've become the expert on the equipment because most of the equipment is not proprietary Army equipment, but what they call COTS or commercial off the shelf, and its stuff I work with everyday at my office type Army job but in a different capacity (meaning not mounted to the back of trailers and in HUMVEE shelters and hardened cases). Check it...

This is the Satellite Transportable Terminal (or STT). We send data, video, and voice over this thing. The white cover actually vibrates to knock off snow and ice because we are special enough to have that in Wisconsin.

This is what it looks like behind it. This controls everything on the satellite dish. The whole thing folds down to move it.

 

This is called HCLOS or High Capacity Line Of Site. We send data and all of the above across this to a site that may be a couple football fields away or several miles away.

This is one of the sites we setup. We setup 3 total.

This is in the back of one of the HUMVEE shelters. It provides phone, video, internet, email, and secure communications to end users.

But Two Rivers is a beautiful place, right on Lake Michigan. I didn't get to enjoy much of it because of the 12+ hour days...but I snapped a couple pictures of the lake shore.