13th week: Becoming a diagnostician soldier

This week we've got the grade of a soldier and our (most of it) technical recruitment as a radio device mechanic / diagnostician ended. The exam in diagnostics we had consisted of building an antenna, installing an army car with the antennas, checking some stuff on the radio facility of a tank if there are any errors and searching some specific radio components.

If someone is interested in the swiss armed force grades: All are listed plus a short description (translated by Google Translator) here(click). And for sure, our cadre got a new higher grade as well. They became sergeants this week.

The week ended by playing with a thermal image camera and using some special field-glasses to find out a distance. On week 14 we will have military class as we had in the first few weeks. Read more next week! ;-)

Week 11 & 12: Marching to the radio tanks!

These two weeks were somewhat hard because it started with a 25km march. We've started on a village fully packed with our combat bag and our weapon. This is a picture of our combat bag (containing the tent unit, gamelle and our man cleaning utensils):



It took us 5h to arrive the destination, our casern. A lot of people hat a lot of blisters and it caused lot of pain and blood. While marching the stronger people helped the a bit weaker people by wearing his/her weapon or other parts of the combat bag. After the first 5 to 10 km I already though I'm not able to continue marching, but then I simply switched off my brain and "concentrated" on the march, so I've been able to stand the whole march.

The 12th week we were gone to a car/tank pool to learn some fundamental things about several military tanks. It was fun to turning the tank tower, playing with the canon and its camera. Most people tried to track some specific personnes with the canon ;-).
After the introduction day we were repairing the tank radio devices in shift operation. Some detachements containing approx 6 people had to work for 4 hours, then sleep 4 hours and so on. During the day we had to entire day.


The two weeks ended by attending a course in our army weapon called: training in inspecting weapons. First we learned about the details of our weapon, about the possible broken things and how they look like and how to find them. After this we had to analyse several components and telling whats wrong with it. Now we are able to control weapons of a entire military company!

Week 10: Connecting via Ionosphere

These few days we've learnt a new antenna and radio type which is capable of sending and receiving signals which are being send to and received from the earth ionosphere. Instead of sending signals to a point directly, this is a way to use the ionosphere. The main advantages of the "new" type is the (vey longer) distance. This new radio works on High Frequency while we have been working on the past in the Very High Frequency area. New radio gives new antennas, therefore we've installed them on different cars and ground. Happily, the communication always worked nicely ;-) In the end of the week we have taken a look how the radio devices are set up in some tanks. Short week, short entry ;) see you next weekend!

9th week: Learning new devices ...

After having passed this week I've already done the half of the entire recruitment. We've got new leaders, new higher-grade fuckers and we've not done anything interesting but learning new (radio) devices and played with them a bit. This week was as interesting as the others: Boring like hell! On the monday, our class teacher has shown us a telephone which can be easily added to a phone line by using adapter (you don't need to cut the phone line). This technique allows you to create a (ie) 12 kilometre phone line and you can just "plug in" this special phone. The signal is (fm) analog and therefore unencrypted. Another phone we got know is the old army phone:



In order to call someone you need to turn the red (see on the picture) crank. If the ring bells on the other side, you can start talking. In the end of this week we had a radio practice. We were gone to the field and built an antenna, connected it to our radio devices (incl. replaying stations) and talked to other radio stations. The aim of this practice was primary to put the theory into practice (rules of speaking and all that radio stuff)! Bye...

7th & 8th week: start of the technical recruitment

In the 7th week, we've started to get know our nice teacher and finally started to learn how some of the radio devices work, after all (in the 8th week) we've build the antenna stations. Because the 8th week was so short I decided to put the weeks 7 & 8 together. On the first few days we've learned all the materials, tools and devices we have to work with. We've learnt something about the cars (where we have to install the radio stations incl. antenna). Besides this, we needed to attend a lot of theory stuff about the military radio network and it's security (in sense of installing cables and not about cryptography). The last days we've played with following radio device (SE-235, found on google):


The first picture shows the radio device itself and the second shows the radio dev installed in a special "bag". On this pic you can see as well the micro telephone and a collapsible radio antenna. This is the portable version (radio soldiers wear it) where there do exist some portable version for cars, tanks, and other mobile military things, too. These devices can work digital and analog. The analog modus will be used only for testing purpose, because it's not encrypted. The other modus (digital) is for the real operation, for example at war. What kind of crypto-algo the military use is unknown, but a frequency hopping is used to provide another security layer.

Such a radio device installed on a military automobile looks like:

Others automobiles are (without installed antenna and not the full list of automobiles):

Above the "Puch" and below the "Duro":

The antennas are not only installed on cars. There are antenna-sets, where you can install them to whatever place you'd like to. The height of the antenna varies, too. In these weeks, we've also learnt how to install relay-stations.

About the military cadre, we have now 3 guys who are a bit higher-grade than we are and they let us feel this clearly. It's normal they do nothing but standing next to you and saying what to do or shouting at you and throwing around with swear words. The theory changed, the bastards are the same. Per default you're an asshole in this association but they need you. They love to pick a victim (more or less randomly) and just always shoot at it whenever they feel to do it. If you're a weak person then you will have a problem with it definately. But in the end, not the victims are the poor but the higher-grade guys with the character level of a kindergarten.

Have fun, see you later!

6th week: End of my basic training

Finally, this is the last week which is most hard regarding to the exercice activities! This week we had have lot of inspections of higher grade people. They've checked if we have learned our stuff well. Happily we've all passed it :-).

I'm looking forward to see what's coming as next because our recruitment as a device mechanic starts. Stay tuned, more information come later on!

5th week: hospital time

Yes, already week number 5. I have to stand another week to pass the basic swiss army apprenticeship. On the monday and tuesday we didn't do a lot of interesting things but shooting, shooting and shooting again. After the military I'm sure I'll never ever touch such a weapon again :-). On the wednesday I had to go to the military doctor because I had some troubles with my feet. "Happily" they decided I have to go to the surgeon to cut away some parts of the toe because I had some blisters (which have grown wild :-( and thus my toe nail was growing to inside). Since wednesday I had have to stay at the hospital and believe me, it was boring like hell: You cannot do something else than laying on the bed the whole day... Today I have to go to the hospital again :-( See you next week!