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TSRA NEWSLETTER
Publication of the Textron Systems Retirees Association
Vol. 6 No. 1
www.tsretirees.org
The Membership Affairs Committee
(MAC)
The MAC is the lifeblood of TSRA. It is
responsible for achieving and sustaining the TSRA
membership, establishing and maintaining effective
communication with members to determine their
needs and common interests, and promoting the
common interests of the membership.
To achieve these lofty goals, the MAC sponsors
several activities and social events throughout the year
and maintains the largest membership of any TSRA
committee. We are grateful for the contributions of
these dedicated TSRA member-volunteers, especially
the hard-working chair of the MAC, Ken Clark, and
we acknowledge them here so they may receive the
appreciation they deserve.
MAC Chairman: Ken Clark
MAC Members: Al Arsenian, Guy Berube,
Dash Nahabedian, Harry Lockhart,
Leo Roy, Carol Wiberg, Don Lutz
MAC Membership & Mailing Support Group:
Bill Fitzgerald, Gina Miele, Gus Miele
MAC Phone Contact Group: Dave White,
Ron Milauskas, Bill Peck, Vinnie Ribaudo,
Stan Sarfaty, John Kinsky, Penny Palayma,
Jim Sheehan, Jack McDaid
MAC Death Notice Reporting
Boston Globe: Harry Lockhart, Al Schofield,
John Petty, Fred Santangelo, Lew
Batchelder, Larry Barrett, John Lescher.
Lawrence Eagle Tribune/Haverhill Gazette:
Leo Roy, Linda Trimble, Bob Cranton
Lowell Sun: Anita Adams, Joe Pelletier
MAC Surviving Spouse Group: Linda Trimble,
Joan MacCannell, Eileen Burns
February 2006
TSRA Events Planned for 2006
The Membership Affairs Committee (MAC) of
TSRA has begun planning TSRA events for 2006.
The current schedule is as follows:
May 18: Annual Spring Luncheon
May 18: Annual Meeting of Corporation
June 7: Planning the Future of TSRA Meeting
June 23: Avco/Textron 50th Anniversary
Celebration
June:
Annual Golf Tournament
July:
Lowell Spinners Baseball Game
August: Boston Harbor Cruise
October: Fall Luncheon
Meeting Our Member’s Needs
A Continuing Journey
June 7, 2006
Winchester Country Club
The TSRA Board of Directors has
scheduled the 4th gathering of the Corporate
Representatives and all other interested
members to help shape the future of TSRA to
ensure the continued value of TSRA to its
membership.
All members of TSRA are invited to
participate in this stimulating event that will
also provide an opportunity to reunite in a
common effort with your former colleagues.
If you are interested in attending or want
more information, contact Ray D’Auteuil at
[email protected]. or 603-362-5921
Published by the Textron Systems Retirees Association, P.O. Box 2702, Acton, MA 01720
See our web site at www.tsretirees.org
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Save this date!
TSRA Spring Luncheon
May 18, 2006
Details will be mailed to your home in April.
What’s New at Textron
Textron Systems: As of December 2005,
Textron Systems Corporation has 4 new General
Managers reporting to President Dick Millman.
They are Mark Catizone, new GM of Textron
Systems, Roger Pascoe, the new GM of HR
Textron, Tom Walmsley, GM of TMLS, and Ian
Walsh, GM of Lycoming. Frank Tempesta is the
Chief Operating Officer of Textron Systems
Corporation and also reports to Dick Millman.
Textron Corporate: January 26, 2006 –
Textron Inc. today announced that its Board of
Directors has authorized a $0.15 per share increase
in the company's annualized Common Stock
dividend, from $1.40 per share to $1.55 per share.
Accordingly, the Board declared a quarterly
dividend of $0.3875 per share on the company's
Common Stock. The Board also declared a
quarterly dividend of $0.52 per share on Textron's
$2.08 Cumulative Convertible Preferred Stock,
Series A, and $0.35 per share on the company's
$1.40 Convertible Preferred Dividend Stock,
Series B. All dividends will be paid on April 1,
2006 to holders of record at the close of business
on March 10, 2006.
George Sutton Honored
From The Brooklyn Technical High School Technite
On November 17, 2005, Caltech graduate magna cum
laude, George W. Sutton, Ph.D. ’45 was inducted
into the Brooklyn Technical High School Alumni
Hall of Fame. George was honored for his many
technical achievements including the development of
ablation heat shield material allowing reentry from
space; the design of the first high power laser; and
development of the high frequency transcutaneous
energy supply that now powers artificial hearts.
50th Anniversary Celebration
of
AERL
Avco Specialty Materials
Avco RAD
Textron Systems
will be held on
June 23, 2006
at
Textron Systems
201 Lowell Street
Wilmington, MA
Details and invitations will be mailed to
every TSRA member later this spring.
Longwood Travel Serves Individual and
Group Travel Needs
In addition to booking Textron and other
corporate travel, Longwood Travel also serves
individual and group travel needs including
charter trips to the Caribbean and Mexico,
scheduled air and land trips to the Caribbean,
Mexico, Hawaii, Disney and Las Vegas, escorted
tours in the US and all over the world, and every
type of cruise.
There are added savings for a group of
retirees—or even a family group—that would like
to travel together. Most cruise lines allow one
person to travel free when 16 people travel
together. Some cruise lines even provide free
travel for one person PLUS a discounted price.
Email [email protected] to be added to
their weekly newsletter with all the latest prices
and special deals. They are still located near the
entrance to the Textron Wilmington facility.
Published by the Textron Systems Retirees Association, P.O. Box 2702, Acton, MA 01720
See our web site at www.tsretirees.org
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50-Year History: More Reminiscences
And now, the rest of the story….By George Kaiser
In Memoriam
TSRA sends its condolences and sincere sympathy
to the families of the following former
Avco/Textron employees and spouses:
Sal Palmisano 1/20/2006
Seymour Handman 12/3/05
Domenic Brunetto 11/2005
Scott Leonard 9/2005
SURVIVING SPOUSE INFORMATION
providing retirement information to
members who have lost a spouse
is available on the TSRA web at:
http://www.tsretirees.org/resources/SSinfo.doc
Or send a request to TSRA, P.O. Box 105
Manchester, MA
Coincidences!
From Steve Terani
Jim Sheehan sat at our table and we discovered
that he did the landscaping on our house back in
1958 or so, long before we owned it. He was out
of his regular job at the time and drove a
bulldozer. He was a machinist in our prototype
lab, but I had never met him face to face before.
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After having contributed some twenty pages of
information about the TRAP program, along with
associated charts, graphs and photographs for
inclusion in the History Program, and having just
finished reading the 57-page history of Avco, I
could only think of radio’s famous storyteller,
Paul Harvey. This gentleman would keep his
radio audience fairly well spellbound until near
the end of the program when he would pause and
utter these familiar words, “…and now…for the
rest of the story.” At this point he would
introduce the clincher, a name or event that would
leave his listening audience surprised at the
ending.
The flood of material that was introduced to
Jules Siegel during and after that initial meeting at
Wilmington was of such a large, complicated and
varied nature, that it would have taken a twovolume work, several associate writers, and a
minimum of three years to tell the whole story in
detail. My congratulations to Mr. Siegel for the
fine job of condensing the who, what, when, and
where of Avco, from its conception to the present
day.
I can only hope that others will follow my lead
in writing articles about their particular work
areas, their trials and tribulations, so that other
units of Avco can begin to appreciate just how
widespread was the Avco family.
In May of 1962 I joined AVCO Everett
Research Laboratory as an engineering technician
in the TRAP program, joining a team of engineers,
technicians, and scientists who had been involved
in the program of observing and recording data
from reentering missiles. This phase of the project
was named “Gaslight” and had its inauspicious
start on 18 May 1958 in the Atlantic Missile
Range. A six-man team from AERL left the
laboratory on this first downrange mission, armed
with a rather crude (by later standards) set of
observation equipment consisting of a nest of four
Leica cameras equipped with 50 mm f2 lenses and
“chopped” into overlapping 70x80 degree fields of
view, a hand-tracked 16mm cine camera to
measure integrated radiant intensity in the visible
Published by the Textron Systems Retirees Association, P.O. Box 2702, Acton, MA 01720
See our web site at www.tsretirees.org
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wavelength, a six-barrel ‘screech’ radiometer and
a two-barrel radiometer, each with an 8mm
boresight camera, used to measure radiant
intensity in discrete spectral regions within the
visible spectrum.
This array of instruments was used aboard the
USS Stickell, a U.S. Navy destroyer. The first test
was against a Jupiter, test AM-5, and they also
covered a second reentry in July 1958, this one a
Jupiter AM-6.
On both tests, the AERL team consisted of
Frank Pettis, Gordon Abell, Check Phaneuf, and
three others whose names I have not yet been able
to track down. The designation “Gaslight” was
called out by the first member of the downrange
crew who saw the first glow of the reentering nose
cone as it started to heat up to luminescence, and
on this signal, all recording systems would be
triggered. This signaling procedure continued all
through the entire downrange reentry program.
These first attempts at recording reentry data
by tracking were followed by airborne teams using
cameras, radiometers, and other instrumentation to
capture information through the windows of a C54 military aircraft. Window glass tended to lend
distortion to the data, and so it was decided to
cover reentries through the open half-door on the
side of the plane. Instrumentation was bettered
and increased in quantity as well. Before long, the
entire side door of the plane was removed to
accommodate the added equipment.
The contracting agencies were evidently
pleased with the results of the airborne teams, and
expanded the contracts to allow AERL to develop
a small fleet of aircraft that were either leased
from aircraft companies or on loan from the
military. The word “bailed” is perhaps the correct
military term used to describe the usage of Air
Force or Navy aircraft on a part-time, as-available
basis by a contractor to the military. The longterm leased aircraft, such as our DC-4-M2, a
former Trans-Canada transport, was designated as
a “Meteor Radar Ionized Wake Research” aircraft.
It was rebuilt with two giant antennae atop the
plane, making it look like a pair of huge luggage
handles. These, of course, generated a lot of air
resistance, and combining that with the fact that
the M-2 version of the DC-4 had been powered
with Canadian war-surplus Rolls Royce in-line
engines instead of the usual radial engines,
combined to make the completed product a rather
slow-flying aircraft that had a maximum altitude
capacity of about 13,000 feet. The crew, always
on the alert for some humor, immediately dubbed
this as the world’s safest aircraft for over water
flying since it flow with its tail somewhat low,
therefore it was always in the ditching position.
We also joked that if it ever flew into the side of a
mountain (because it certainly couldn’t fly over it)
it was so slow we could jump out the side door to
safety as the nose hit the mountain!
Another leased aircraft, the Douglas DC-6, a
former Dutch KLM passenger craft, has been
rebuilt with a large door on the port side. The
door, measuring approximately six feet high and
ten feet long, was installed on a vertical runner
system similar to the ones used on overhead
garage doors. The recording instrumentation, now
quite varied and sophisticated, was mounted in
several levels on a large aluminum table that was
mounted on tracks. When the door would be
opened up in flight in preparation for covering the
reentry, the table and its load could be rolled up to
the edge of the open door and locked in place.
During a typical reentry mission, with the
aircraft at about 25,000 feet, the door would be
opened some time in advance of the expected
reentry. The table would be positioned, and the
crew, wearing oxygen masks and warm jackets
against the freezing temperature at that altitude,
would man the instruments during the mission.
When the reentry vehicle had splashed, the table
was retracted, the door closed, and the data from
the instruments would be unloaded and packed
into a chest to be returned to AERL for data
analysis.
A similar door and instrumentation system was
installed on a Lockheed Constellation, a WV C121 aircraft to cover the Atlantic Mission Range
and the other would be based on Kwajalein, in the
Pacific Missile Range. In addition to the WV
aircraft, we also had based on Kwajalein a small
single engine DeHaviland Beaver aircraft
equipped with two ballistic cameras, a high-speed
cine camera, and associated instrumentation.
Published by the Textron Systems Retirees Association, P.O. Box 2702, Acton, MA 01720
See our web site at www.tsretirees.org
4
Although the original work order specified the
aircraft to be used at about 10,000 feet as an
auxiliary instrument platform, in actuality, we
covered missions at an altitude of 20,000 feet, at
which point the Beaver was literally clawing to
stay up there. On my first mission in this aircraft, I
was so busy getting the equipment in readiness, I
did not have time to run back to the hangar for a
warm jacket, and I flew that mission in my khaki
shorts and a tee shirt. I don’t know what the
temperature was at 20,000 feet, but I was frozen.
Did I mention that we did not have a door on the
passenger side of the plane where I sat? That’s
where the camera equipment was mounted, on the
interior and exterior. Approximately five minutes
before expected first light of the incoming missile,
I had to reach outside the aircraft where one of the
ballistic cameras was located, and remove the lens
cap. This leaning out of the aircraft required that
the seat belt be unbuckled and the pilot would lean
over and hold me back by my belt and pants.
Most assuredly I stayed on good terms with the
pilot! Only three downrangers had the grand
opportunity to fly missions in this same way!
In addition to the small fleet of piston-engine
aircraft, AERL utilized two US Air Force KC135J tanker aircraft. “Greenhouses” were built
over the fore section of the fuselage to house
tracking and data gathering instruments in addition
to the instruments housed in the body of the
aircraft, scanning the reentries through special
optical glass windows. These tankers were made
available to AERL for tracking when it did not
interfere with Air Force schedules, and were
utilized for some missions in the far reaches of the
Pacific.
Beyond the instrumented aircraft, we also
developed a portable, ground-based data recording
instrumentation system, the Everett Laboratory
Complementary Instrument Deployment, or as we
called it, El Cid, after the picture of the same name
that had just come upon the scene at that time.
This system was used extensively at White Sands
and also as an auxiliary reentry recording system
at Ennilabigan and Meck Islands in the Kwajalein
atoll.
There were several other aircraft and an untold
number of stories waiting to be told by the
downranger members of AERL. Hopefully, some
of them will submit their stories through the pages
of TSRA’s newsletter. There are other areas of
AERL interest
to
be
discussed,
i.e.,
Magnetohydrodynamics, the laser program, the
medical programs, etc. Let’s go gang!
* * * * * *
POLLING ALL MEMBERS
What would you like to see in the TSRA
Newsletter and on tsretirees.org—the TSRA
website? Do you ever check the website? Email
your feedback and input to [email protected]
or send it by regular mail to TSRA, P.O. Box 105,
Manchester, MA 01944.
Recognizing a Stroke
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke
victim within 3 hours, he can totally reverse the
effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was
getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting
to the patient within 3 hours, which is touch
because sometimes the symptoms of a stroke are
difficult to identify.
The stroke victim may suffer brain damage
when people nearby fail to recognize the
symptoms. Now doctors say a bystander can
recognize a stroke by asking three simple
questions:
1. Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. Ask the person to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. Ask him/her to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE
(coherently, i.e. It is sunny out today.)
If the person has trouble with any of these
tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the
symptoms to the dispatcher.
Researched have urged the general public to
learn the three questions. Widespread use of this
test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment
of a stroke, thereby preventing brain damage to
the victim.
Published by the Textron Systems Retirees Association, P.O. Box 2702, Acton, MA 01720
See our web site at www.tsretirees.org
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