Well again I am trying to think of something stellar to blog about.  But then there are so many subjects and so little time.  I did have a little fun today as my class was doing their first labs in the OTCIXS/TADIX areas, which is always good for a few laughs.

These are basically the name of some communications circuits that use some specific equipment.  Today I was injecting faults into the ON-143 Interconnecting Group.  For non-navy electronic types, an interconnecting group is an interface unit that allows different types of equipment to talk to each other.

What we have is several different computer systems, with different formats and capabilities that have to be encrypted and then through an Ultra High Frequency Transceiver to a satellite and then will go anywhere in the world the Navy operates.

In addition to acting as an interface to allow different equipment to talk to each other it also acts as a storage buffer, collecting all the message traffic from the different systems hooked to it, and storing it until given permission to transmit by the net control station.  It is pretty cool the way it happens and up to 9999 users can be on the net.  Just imagine if they all tried to transmit to the satellite at the same time. 

Anyway I get to teach the sequence of events that keep only one station transmitting at a time and all.  It is fun to teach the ways they do this stuff and keep everything in an orderly fashion and all.

Well I have taught all the classroom stuff and today was the time to break it and have them find the problems.  His piece of gear is very easy to troubleshoot because about 80% of the problems will generate a bit (built in test) code, and then all you have to do is look it up in the technical manual to have the problem localized down to just a couple of circuit cards.  They usually find the problems right off, but sometimes troubleshooting on the first day on a new piece of gear can get quite exciting.

Since the equipment is so easy to troubleshoot, sometimes they can't believe they found the problem that fast and so they do not believe their results.  Those are the fun ones because you get to ask them why they kept going after they identified the fault.  Once they get the hang of it though they can then rapidly solve most of the problems, usually within 10 minutes.

Sometimes they get way off the beaten path, or they forget their place in the procedures and I have fun trying to get them back on track, mainly by asking them questions about what they did.  I sometimes have to restrain myself from laughing, because sometimes the answers to my questions can be quite humorous.

Anyway, I guess that is it for today.  I have 7 more workdays to go before my vacation starts and I go see Laila and her family again.  9 days total to go, and I am getting very excited about it.