Dear Readers

From now on I intend to occasionally write some blog posts in German. Although most of my German friends speak English, they sometimes don't understand the full meaning of my “ramblings,” especially when I use American slang expressions, homilies, or puns. In general, I don't think that I will translate specific items, but I intend to write something different in each language. There will be exceptions, of course, when I find a particular story, incident, anecdote, or joke suitable for both languages I will translate that item and post both versions.

P.S.: If you want a good laugh, pass the German text through translating software and enjoy the resulting English “translation.”

The Password

Once upon a time I was assigned to the headquarters of the US Army's 1^st Infantry Division. We would go on what was called Field Training Exercises. These exercises were to familiarize the headquarters staff with the procedures that were to be followed during wartime. To simulate wartime conditions, the exercises always took place in some dense woods. One of the procedures practiced actually was more of a ritual than a procedure that has been practiced by every army since time immemorial: The daily assignment of a “challenge and a reply” - code words which were used to separate a friend from a foe.

When it got dark, the headquarters area was under blackout conditions. That is, no lights except red-filtered flashlights were allowed outside of buildings, tents and vans. These, one had to enter and exit through a double curtain that blocked any light from escaping to the outside. Needless to say, on a moonless, starless night it was pretty darn dark in among the trees. Access to the headquarters was guarded, of course, and anyone approaching by night when visual identification was impossible was challenged with the challenge word. To be able to pass, one had to know the proper reply.

As I had to enter the division headquarters one evening after dark for a high level briefing, I approached the guard point and was challenged with the appropriate words: “Halt, who goes there?” I stated my rank and name and the sentry said, appropriately: “Advance and be recognized!” I gingerly stepped one step closer to the challenger who then said: “Now,”  at which time I took another step forward and the sentry again said: “Now,” no longer in the required whispered tone. I thought, what the devil does he want me to do, I'm already in his face? At that point it came to me that some idiot had made the challenge for the day the word “Now,” and I was expected to reply to it and not step forward any closer.

Mother's Day 2012

A man and a woman were overheard while speaking. The man said: “Honey, you should treat me to a Mother's Day buffet.” To which she replied: “Why should I treat you to a Mother's Day buffet?” “Because I made you a mother!” he said. She thought for a moment and then her face took on a pained expression as she said with a raised voice: “Get outa here! I didn't want you to make me a mother, I thought we were just going to cuddle!” Happy Mother's Day all you accidental mothers!

Air Weather Service Operations at Goodfellow Air Force Base in the 1960's

I was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base (AFB) in San Angelo, Texas, in the mid-1960's. Here is a look back in history by way of a short account of what went on at Goodfellow AFB then.

Goodfellow AFB had been a pilot training base during World War II. In 1958 pilot training ceased and the base assumed the mission of teaching young officers, mostly second lieutenants straight out of college, their jobs in the US Air Force. Their career field was called Security Service and their jobs were to work in, and be managers of, units that collected intelligence data by listening in on other people's communications.

Balloon Detachment

The other activity on the base was our weather detachment. It was an Air Weather Service unit, but the actual weather people were in the minority. Most of the detachment consisted of balloon riggers, aircraft maintenance people, and aircrews. The detachment's mission was to get air samples from high up in the atmosphere - 60,000 to 120,000 feet up. The way the samples were obtained was through the use of high altitude balloons. The air samples were then passed to the Atomic Energy Commission for analysis. The purpose was to determine who in the world (besides the US) was testing atomic weapons. No one advertised the fact that they were going to detonate an atomic bomb to test its effectiveness, but it was known that several countries were testing. Naturally, the US was most concerned about the Russians and the Chinese. Scientists of the Atomic Energy Commission could actually tell who was blowing stuff into the atmosphere by examining the minute particles that floated around the globe at great heights after a test.

The balloons looked like huge plastic bags, about a quarter of a mile long, that were stretched out on the runway on a carpet to protect them. Precisely the right amount of helium was pumped into the balloons to bring them to their intended altitude and to make them float there. Attached to these balloons were large electric motors that activated large fans that blew air across very fine filters. Tiny particles would be trapped by the filters. At those altitudes, the fans had to blow a lot of the thin air onto the filters to be able to get a sufficient sample of the radioactive debris. So, one of the higher altitude flights might take 10 to 12 hours. After it was determined that enough of a sample was obtained a signal from the ground initiated an electric spark that cut the connection between the balloon and the payload (motors, filters, blowers) which would then fall to earth suspended by several giant parachutes. Relieved of the weight of the payload, the balloon would rise and finally burst into a million tiny pieces that became part of the floating debris in the atmosphere.

The launching of the balloon was a spectacle in itself. First of all, it had to be done without any wind, usually at sunrise. The payload would be positioned on a large truck. The end of the balloon, which was attached to the payload, would be clamped tight unto a special clamp on the truck. As helium was pumped into the balloon, it slowly rose. This is where it had to be wind still, because now the truck maneuvered under the slowly rising balloon so that at the moment when the balloon was completely off the ground and vertically over the truck, the clamp could be released so that the payload would rise smoothly without hitting the ground. It happened now and then that a small breath of air caught the balloon, which looked like a giant sausage skin, twisting it or even sending it back to the ground and tearing it. Or the payload was released too soon and it crashed unto the ground. To prevent the latter mishap, a launch controller with a headset stood on the truck bed, strapped to the cab of the truck, giving directions to the driver because the driver had to concentrate on steering the truck and could not see the balloon once it was straight overhead.

The unit had four H-21 helicopters and a C-47 transport aircraft assigned. The four helicopters were stationed on the base, the C-47 with a special glass bubble on top was stationed at the municipal airport of San Angelo because the runway on Goodfellow AFB was used for launching the balloons. When the balloon was successfully launched, the C-47 would take off and follow it, someone in the glass dome keeping it in sight all the time. Of course, the C-47 could not go to the heights that the balloons went, therefore the balloons were kept in sight with field glasses. Two of the helicopters would leap-frog from one airport to another along the path of the balloon, which was being relayed by the C-47. When the payload landed, one of the helicopters would fly there, land in some farmer's field or on a road, retrieve the payload, and bring it back. It is not surprising that people in the Southwest occasionally thought they saw UFO's and little green men carrying away what they thought were parts of a crashed space ship. Sometimes the helicopters would have to go well into Louisiana, 400 or 500 miles from San Angelo to retrieve the payload, depending on the winds.

Air Weather Service Involvement

Whereas the balloon launchers and air crews were specialists in their fields, they were not trained weather observers or forecasters. It was the weathermen's job to determine what the weather would be like for the next day's launch, how strong the winds would be, and if there were going to be clouds. There were high level meetings almost like those for a space launch. A "go, no-go" decision was made the day before the launch based on the forecasters' prognosis because a flight plan had to be filed with the FAA well in advance and the helicopters and the C-47 had to be prepared for the time and distance that was anticipated that they would have to be underway. In addition to the calm winds at launch time there could not be more than scattered clouds along the flight path because the balloon had to be able to be kept in sight by the C-47 and by all other aircraft in the area.

Weather Station

There were two sections to the actual weather support team. One section consisted of weather observers and weather forecasters. It was the observers' job to monitor the four or five teletype machines, post the weather reports that came in over teletype, and plot maps so that the forecasters could make their forecasts. This part of the job was just like in a regular weather station. The difference was that the observers didn't take any weather observations and the forecasters only made specialized weather forecasts for the balloon launches and flights.

RAWINSONDE Operations

The other section of the weather support team was a RAWINSONDE section. A RAWINSONDE ("sonde" is French for probe) is a piece of equipment for use with weather balloons that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them to a fixed receiver. In those days, a RAWINSONDE measured temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure and transmitted these data via radio signal. The signal was tracked with a circular antenna similar to a radar antenna that locked on to the radio signal from the unit on the weather balloon once the antenna was manually pointed at the ascending unit (which was not always easy if the balloon took off rapidly or a cloud bank suddenly swallowed it before a good manual fix could be established). Today, with GPS and other technical innovations, RAWINSONDE operations are probably quite a bit different.

A RAWINSONDE team consisted of three to four operators. They would calibrate the sensors and the transmitter before sending them aloft. Meanwhile, another part of the team filled the balloon with the calculated amount of helium to allow it to go to the required altitude. The balloons used for RAWINSONDE were much smaller than the balloons used to collect the atmospheric samples, but they had to reach the same altitudes as the balloons with the payload to get an accurate picture of what wind speeds and directions the research balloons would encounter on their ascent and at their designated floating altitude. The weather balloon was tied to a paper parachute with about 60 feet of string which in turn was attached by another 60 feet of string to the RAWINSONDE instrument which was about the size of two shoe boxes put together. The paper parachute served the purpose of bringing the instruments back to earth slowly enough after the balloon burst so that it would not kill anyone or otherwise do serious damage. The instrument was only used one time, no effort to retrieve it was made. If, for some reason, the balloon burst before reaching the required altitude, the whole procedure had to be repeated until the correct altitude was reached, which happened occasionally.

When releasing the weather balloon it was often the case that the person holding the instrument, which was attached to the balloon by the 120 foot train, had to run quite a distance before the balloon was high enough so that he could let the instrument go. The procedure was quite similar to that followed by the launchers of the big balloons, except that it all had to be done on foot. Sometimes the wind was so strong that the balloon took off horizontally instead of vertically and the operator had to run very fast or the instrument would hit the ground and the whole procedure from calibrating the instrument to the filling and releasing of the balloon would have to start all over.

As the antenna tracked the RAWINSONDE, one person would read the azimuth angle (horizontal direction) in which the antenna was pointing and the distance of the airborne instrument from the antenna and call them out to another person who would plot them on a round board. This way the wind speed and direction could be calculated by the way the balloon was moving. At the same time another person would convert the pressure readings to altitude values and plot them and the corresponding temperature and humidity readings on a board that represented a vertical cross section of the atmosphere. When the "run" was finished the results were passed to the forecasters and transmitted for the rest of the weather community to use.

I was fortunate to have worked both in the weather station as well as a RAWINSONDE operator. Even though the work in the weather station was all done on an eight-hour day shift and the RAWINSONDE operations took place during night shifts that regularly lasted 10 to 12 hours, sometimes more depending on mission requirements, I opted to switch to the upper air operation when a shortage on that team occurred just to get the experience. It was an experience that few others in Air Weather Service can claim.

Guided Walking Tour Apps

Some time ago I announced that I had created the content for three guided walking tour apps for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod-Touch about Heidelberg, Germany for a company named GPSmyCity.com. Creating the content meant selecting the sights, determining the GPS coordinates of the sights, taking pictures of the sights, writing the text descriptions for each sight, and making audio recordings of the text for each sight. GPSmyCity.com put the whole thing together by doing the programming, providing the map which directs the user from sight to sight, and getting the apps posted on iTunes. An iTunes account is necessary to download the apps. Each tour is available as a “lite or demo” version which is free, and a full version which includes the audio descriptions and step by step directions from sight to sight. These guides work off-line, hence no Internet connection is necessary, nor do they incur the costly roaming charges when traveling to foreign cities and can be downloaded via the “Free City Maps and Walks” app at:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/free-city-maps-walks-470-cities/id417207307?mt=8

So far travelers from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, the Netherlands, Estonia, Romania, Great Britain, Greece, and Germany have bought copies of the apps.

Here are the latest fliers I have created to advertise the apps.

Charming Heidelberg - A Walk through the Old Part of the City

A popular German folk song is entitled Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren. Literally translated that means, "I've lost my heart in Heidelberg." The old part of town (Altstadt) with its many historic sights introduces the visitor to the charms of Heidelberg. Here is a short description of a tour to some of the most important sights in this charming city.

A leisurely walking tour of the Altstadt might start at the Bismarckplatz and proceed down the Hauptstrasse (a 1.6 km pedestrian zone), stopping at the statue of Robert Bunsen, inventor of the Bunsen Burner, past the Providenzkirche (Providence Church), to the Kurpfälzische Museum (Palatine Museum), to the Universitätsplatz (University Square). There the visitor will see the Old University building, the building known as the Neue Universität (New University) and around the corner the Universitätsbibliothek (University Library) and the Peterskirche (St. Peter's Church). Then on to the former student prison (Karzer), the historic Hotel Ritter, the Marktplatz (Market Square) with the Rathaus (City Hall), the Heiliggeistkirche (Holy Ghost Church), to two historic squares: Kornmarkt (Corn Market) and Karlsplatz (Charles' Square) with views of the Castle, historic buildings and the historic student pubs, Zum Sepp'l (Seppl's) and Roter Ochsen (Red Ox). On to the Alte Brücke (Old Bridge), the medieval former arsenal called Marstall, to the Stadthalle (Congress Center) and back to the Bismarckplatz .

 

This was a brief introduction to the charms of Heidelberg. There are greater details about the sights in the old part of Heidelberg provided by a two-hour guided walking tour called "Heidelberg, Charming Old Town" which is available as an iPhone, iPad and iPod-Touch App via iTunes. You can also access it at:

http://www.gpsmycity.com/gps-tour-guides/heidelberg-2835.html

Scenic Heidelberg – A Walk along the Philosopher's Way

Heidelberg is well-known world-wide not only for its famous university, but also because of its scenic charm. Nestled between opposing hillsides where the Neckar River flows toward the Rhein River, Heidelberg displays a scenic beauty that has inspired many writers and artists to sing its praise in poetry, prose, and on canvas. Here is a short description of a tour that will take you to some of the venues that inspired artists to choose Heidelberg as their theme.

A tour with views of Heidelberg from surrounding heights starts at the Bismarckplatz (Bismarck Square), goes over the Theodor Heuss Bridge to Neuenheim, then up the hill to the Philosophenweg (Philosopher's Way) with its spectacular views of the old part of the city and the castle, a little further up to the Bismarckturm (Bismarck Tower), down the Schlangenweg (Snakes Path) to the Karl-Theodor Bridge at which time the tour ends and the visitor is free to enjoy downtown Heidelberg or to take part 2 of the Scenic Heidelberg tour.

This was a brief introduction to the scenic charm of Heidelberg. There are greater details about the scenic views of Heidelberg provided by a one-hour guided walking tour called “Heidelberg, Scenic Part 1” which is available as an iPhone, iPad, and iPod-Touch App via iTunes. You can also access it at:

http://www.gpsmycity.com/gps-tour-guides/heidelberg-2835.html

Scenic Heidelberg – A Walk through the Heidelberg Castle Grounds

Heidelberg is well-known all over the world for its romantic charm, its old university, and its scenic beauty. Many famous poets, painters, and authors have praised Heidelberg and its charms in their texts, songs, or in their paintings. A visit to Heidelberg is incomplete without an excursion to its surroundings, notably the ancient castle which keeps watch over the city.

A tour to the Heidelberg Castle starts at the Bergbahnstation (Mountain Railway Station) Kornmarkt, goes up a romantic walkway between some stately villas, through the Elisabethentor (Elizabeth Gate) to the Stückgarten (Gun Park). Then to the Torturm (Gate Tower), which is the entrance to the castle courtyard, through the castle courtyard on to the Altan (Great Terrace), then back to the Pulverturm (Powder Tower) and the Hortus Palatinus (Castle Gardens) to the terrace known as Scheffelterrasse where the tour ends.

This was a brief introduction to the scenic charm of the Heidelberg Castle. There are greater details about the Heidelberg Castle provided by a one-hour guided walking tour called “Heidelberg, Scenic Part 2” which is available as an iPhone, iPad, and iPod-Touch App via iTunes. You can also access it at:

http://www.gpsmycity.com/gps-tour-guides/heidelberg-2835.html

My Uncle's Funeral

Some years ago the husband of my father's youngest sister passed away. She was the last living member of my father's side of the family and by marriage her husband was my uncle. I felt obligated to attend the funeral which was being held in a small town in the northern part of Bavaria, Germany.

The funeral took place on a January day with temperatures around the freezing point. There was slushy snow on the ground and a light but steady rain was falling which caused rivulets of slush and icy water to cascade down the village street. After the lengthy service in the unheated church the funeral procession headed to the local cemetery which was about a mile outside of town.

The lengthy service in the unheated church had caused me to be chilled to the bone already. Now the slow march through the slushy water in the street and the rain provided a soaking from below as well as from above. However, it was worth it for the experience.

The funeral procession was led by the priest and the altar boys, each wrapped in clear plastic rain skins remiscent of Saran Wrap, followed by a brass band that played the same funeral dirge over and over again. After that came the casket followed by the bereaved family.

The rain, the slush, the cold, and the whole atmosphere made me feel as if I were watching the whole thing from another level - I felt as if I were watching a movie. What came to mind was the funeral scene at the beginning of the movie Dr. Zhivago - unreal and yet deeply moving.

The procession thus went on for the better part of half an hour. The rain, the slush on the ground, the funeral dirge, and the slow pace of the procession made for a spectacle that I will never forget. The fortitude shown by the participants of this ceremony went beyond the call of duty. At the grave site we endured another interminably-seeming timespan listening to the graveside speeches, until the casket was lowered to it's final resting place.

The immediate family and some friends then retraced our route to one of the restaurants in the village for the obligatory food and drink, but at a much quicker pace. There the first thing I did was go to the men's room to take off my wet shoes and wet socks to dry them under the hand drier.

May my uncle rest in peace, I hope that I am not put into the frozen ground on a dismal day as he was.

How We Made Our Grandson Cry

A few weeks ago one of our daughters with her two sons, Troy age eight and Teddy age six, was visiting us. While watching TV I announced that I was a little hungry. The boys chimed in and proclaimed that they were hungry as well. Luckily another one of our daughters had left us two frozen pizzas in the freezer compartment. She, being health-conscious, had left us pizzas topped with vegetables, rather than with meat products.

Oma baked one of the pizzas and proudly presented the first slice to Troy. Troy took one look at it, shook his head, and turned away. His mother explained that Troy doesn't like vegetables on his pizza. Oma then passed the plate over to Teddy. Teddy took one look at it and burst into tears. He bawled as if he had just been accused of the biggest transgression that a six-year old could commit. He buried his face on his mother's shoulder and continued his heart-rending sobbing. We were aghast at the reaction that the well-meant offering of a slice of pizza produced. Finally Teddy's mother explained that Teddy doesn't like "green stuff" on his pizza.

I must confess that I am not particularly fond of vegetables, including "green stuff," on my pizza; but I think that Teddy has to work on his emotional responses to everyday disappointments.