Thank you all for your kind words about “Fathers Day” and several encourage me to keep writing so here is another tale…

Those of us that served at Laon and other places in Europe remember the electricity was different. It was 60 Hertz and 220 Volts. One of the machines in the field maintenance shops called a DuAll which was a big band saw that could cut a lot of things but it couldn’t because all the blades that came with the saw had eventually broken and the supply system only replenished them in 100 ft coils that had to be welded on site.

The machine welder wouldn’t work because it was made to American standards which was 60 Hertz and 110 Volts so we had to have a different transformer with more but smaller windings on the primary. So the craftsmen at Field Maintenance asked me to do something. Mostly it was Marty Mapes that I met as a model airplane flyer. So I asked if I could use the L-20 for a Field Maintenance mercy mission. Marty being married to a native German Josie could speak German pretty well so off we went to Landstuhl and Kaiserslauden where we after many questions were guided to an electrical motor and transformer repair shop that said “Yeah we can fix that” go have a beer or two and it will be ready when you get back.

It was, I paid for it out of my pocket, about $15 if I remember right. I asked how they had counted the turns ratio of the transformer and done the repair so quickly, the German craftsman replied through Marty that they simply cut off the old windings weighed them and calculated how many feet or meters of wire each winding consisted of and adjusted for the difference in Voltage and Hertz and wound the new coils and reassembled the transformer. It was simple for them what had been a problem for the USAF supply system. I treated Marty with a good meal and we flew home the next day and the DuAll saw welded its own blades ever after…

That was just one of the many fun and learning trips I made as a young pilot. I don’t remember if either Marty or I ever filed or were reimbursed for the trip. It was worth it any how. I learned a lot, and over the years I have gained a great respect for craftsmen, they are a true gift to society. Bless them all. Bob