ARIA1

mharney wrote:

I was a 316 at Hickam operating a telemetry rack on JC-130's from 1981-1984. After the crash, an ARIA came through Hickam with some crew I knew from tech school at Lowry (names escape me). As we traded tours of our aircraft, the ARIA guys wistfully noted our many parachutes and emergency exits on a JC-130. Due to the potential danger of the recovery mission, emergency exiting was well covered.
I got out of the service when they closed the 316 AFSC. What AFSC operated the ARIA after the mid 1980's?

Welcome M, I think we were all 316's for quite a while, I recall that the career field was 317's before that, they converted all 316's to Satelite Communication after I got out in the 90's, something like 32 career field, don't recall completely.

Some of the guys I knew that were in Catch a Falling Star were
Ron Haraguchi,
Rich Donnelly
Dan Blanton
John Erice

Any of these ring a bell?

sure, Guchi worked in the Engineering shop, Donnelly was a tech or master in stan/eval, I think..Dennis Sheets was the shop chief, I ran into him later at Lockheed Sunnyvale doing mission controller work.

Some other folks in the TM shop...Mike Medieros, Robbie Robinson, Randy Torres, Chuck Makekau, Larry. Craig, Art, Randy, the civil service guy Don, a dozen others, many ARIA alumni.

In my times, the squadron flew few actual missions, but someone was out practicing most every day. There where about eight B model and H model recovery birds, three or four P model tankers, and a handful of H-53's rescue choppers.

I learned Mongolian BBQ from Rich Donnelly at the cabins at Bellows AFS one fine weekend.

I later spent 10 years as a contractor in the Air Force Satellite Control Network, working at BOSS, POGO, and PIKE.

Excellent,

Well glad you could join us. Rich is on the forum, hope we can find some of those other guys around as well.