Jim White - A Few Recollections
I was a ground communications technician in Hawaii (WAFB) and on Eniwetok from 1966 through 1970 and was the principal ARIA comm operator during the Apollo missions of that time. WAFB was the Pacific comm hub for the Western Test Range in those days. Eniwetok was one of the down range sites and a HF communications point for ARIA missions.
At one point (early 1967?) several of us from around the world spent a week or so at PAFB training on the ARIA systems and working out procedures for establishing and maintaining HF communications during missions. During that week we flew a mission for a missile launch from a sub. As I recall it was the first or one of the first Polaris launches from a British sub. I was able to watch over the shoulder of the ALOTS (Airborne Light Optical Tracking System) operator as he locked onto the missile when it popped out of the water and followed it for several minutes. I well remember that trip because I flew the old Northwest Airlines charter DC6 from Hawaii to Kwajalane to Eniwetok, spent a couple of weeks learning the equipment, flew back to Hawaii and on to Florida for the week of training, then all the way back to Eniwetok. I had been married about two months at the time and did manage one overnight stop in Hawaii with my bride during that odyssey.
During one of the early Apollo missions (might have been 10) I flew aboard one of the ARIA for training/orientation between my shifts on the console at Wheeler Range Communications Control Center (WRCCC). I recall being seated in the back by the crew chief who warned me the aircraft was heavy and the takeoff roll would be long. So I timed it at 102 seconds. It was a bit disconcerting because I knew Kehee Lagoon was at the end of the runway and the Aloha Tower not far beyond. But we got off successfully and I stood behind the HF operator for most of the mission. Quite useful to see the action from the other end of the circuit. That experience allowed me to modify some procedures to improve our HF link quality on future missions. It also gave me great respect for the guys who crewed the aircraft.
While on Eniwetok I worked with my counterparts at WRCC to develop a technique for quieting the HF radio circuits. Prior to that the AF guys at Patrick complained because the voice circuits through Eniwetok were noisy. Unlike the other sites around the world (except perhaps Mahe) the links to Eniwetok were HF radio, not cable or satellite. So we ended up with a double HF hop (ARIA to Eniwetok, Eniwetok to Hawaii) when Eniwetok was in use. The method we worked out was to put a low level tone on the opposite sideband of the link transmitter. At the receive end we cross-patched the AGC circuit so the gain control voltage from the sideband with the tone suppressed the noise on the voice side when no one was talking. This was quite successful and was used for the remainder of the Apollo missions. It made Eniwetok an effective site for ARIA comm relay. We extended that technique to the aircraft quit soon after and were able to greatly improve the utility of the ARIA voice circuits for the remainder of the APOLLO missions.
During one of the first Apollo missions supported by ARIA we had an aircraft over the far west Pacific or perhaps the Indian Ocean. Communications with the capcom was from Houston through Goddard to WRCCC via microwave and cable then a satellite hop over the Pacific to Hawaii. Then there was another satellite hop to the HF ground station in Australia, then HF to the ARIA and S band to the Apollo. The length of the circuit, principally the double satellite hop, caused the delay to be about 3 or 4 seconds. The capcom and the astronauts weren’t expecting that (actually none of us had really considered it). So when the first call was made by the capcom and the astronauts didn’t answer right away, then answered at the same time as the second call and confusion ensued, the capcom gave the circuit back to us as inoperative. It took a bit of fast explaining to brief the capcom. On the second pass, just prior to burning TLI for the moon, they got it right. In those early Apollo missions communication between Houston and the Apollo at TLI was a mission requirement. So it was a big deal to get the circuit through the ARIA established and make it work.
