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!

4th week: Learning about the weapon!

This fourth week was not particular at all. We had to do some exercise, some shooting and some theory about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, other medical things. Besides we had to learn our weapon very well in details. We deconstructed the army weapon and constructed it again. Like they do it here:



This 20 times until everyone was able to do it in a acceptable time. After this procedure, we were bivouacing and did some night trainings like how to walk silence, how to hide things (like yourself) etc.

This entry was a bit short, sorry, but my free time is very very small. See you later!

The 3rd Week: Again shooting and the weekend sentry

Finally I'm back. As I've written I've had have to guard the army place the last weekend and that's why I could not update this blog at that time.

The third week has already begun and they forced us to run the obstacle course. We had to crawl, jump over and climb over some special obstacles and jump down some metres into a fosse and so forth. A lot of (hard) exercise-things.

After this we 've gone shooting again, but this time 300m at a shooting stand close to the army place. We had to eat our food in the army mess tin again.

This week I got the chance to go to the military hospital, finally. I had lot of problems with my feet because of abrasions and blisters. After showing my problem to the doctor he has given me a exclusion for exercises, marches and such things.

I was happy when it was weekend, but I was not that satisfied because they have disposed me to the weekend sentry. We were approx dozens people and we have to guard the army place in 2er groups 4 hours long. The whole weekend, even in the night! When the last group finished, the first group had to guard again until sunday evening again ;). When you have weekend sentry you've got plenty of time. I was able to read 3-4 books, watched 2-3 dvds and just phoned about hours with my girlfriend. Next time I will get my laptop to code the whole weekend ;-).

The 2nd week: stupid leaders

Welcome to the second week. Before I start telling you about the week I want to tell you something about our leaders first.

These are the people who are responsible for us at our recruitment. A lot of them are doing jobs like electricians, shop assistants, baker, brick layers, hospital nurse, butcher ... et cetera, in the civil life. Usually you can recognize them by just analysing their behaviour, because they are just arrogant, unfriendly, discontent and behave like pseudo-heros. They find it cool to just walk from one side to the other once and check if lower-grade people have saluted them. If someone didnt, they point us out of this by shouting at us. Since I do not look for the grade of every single person I walk by on the army place, some of them "correct" me. Sometimes you just cannot see the grades because they are shown on one side only and I don't want to walk around a person to see if its a higher grade or not. Every normal person would understand this but our leaders do not. Such bastards decide, too, if your military time will be fun or will be the hell.

A friend of mine was once chief of our room, and every evening the chief of the room has to tell to a specific higher grade person how many members are in the room, how many are in the army hospital and how many are detached. When he has saluted this special higher grade person and informed him like "1 person at hospital, 8 people here" he has just shouted at him because the order was incorrect. Correct it would be "8 people here, 1 person at hospital". How silly is this? I'm afraid, this is military.

This week we've learnt a lot about the military weapon and we were shooting finally ;). When we were at the shooting place in the forrest we had to eat in our army mess tin (=special box for food, "Gamelle"). After eating we had the pleasure to clean the army mess tin. This process was a bit inconvience, tedious and annoying. The water was used by approx. 50 people. Now you can think of how clean it really was after 10 persons have washed their army mess tin. :D

Besides, we 've learnt the (very) fundamentals about the gas mask and the gas protective clothes (aka overall). They've made a test like, we had have to being able to dress us with a gas mask (taking it out from our bag, which was closed) within 10 seconds! It seems, they really think the next world war will be like the first/second world war.

Before ending this blog entry I want to inform you that I will be unable to write an article about my military time on the next weekend because I have to guard the army place :-(.

After having some more unnecessary stresses they 've let us entering the weekend.

See you in two weeks again. Have fun.

the first week & presentation of myself

Welcome to my Swiss Military Time Blog. I'm 21 year-old swiss guy who is being forced to go to military recruitment for 18 weeks. I'm afraid I didnt want to go there, but I try to write about my current life here. Actually I'm a computer scientist - interested in programming, networking, operating systems and lot of different things - but here in the swiss army, I have to work as a device mechanic. They did not tell me what I have to do exactly as a device mechanic, but as far as I know I will (first few weeks are basic recruitment) be responsible for repairing everything which does not have wheels (or "cars" like tanks). Since I cannot really make notes on my daily life I'll just write what I still do know ;-).


On the first day I got known the chief of our section, had to fill in some forms and got all papers, documents which were and will be necessary for my military recruitment. We had to learn how to salute other army-members of all grades. It was a hard and sucky day, because our waiting has begun! The swiss army has its motto "You run to wait and you wait to run!" Therefore, we stood around for about 3 hours until the very last member of our section arrived. While waiting, we trained the formal salutations. A bit later - when everyone was there - we collected all our clothes and finally the swiss military weapon. Below is a picture:

When it was 10:30pm, we drove from one military place to another one (where we stayed finally!) with a truck and we were sitting on the truck floor. It was very rainy and damn cold :-( Happily, after another two hours we were ready to go to bed. On the next day we waked up at (approx.) 5am. The rest of the week we had to learn for our week exam which decided if someone is able to go home early or rather late. I was able to go home in the middle, so I'm quite happy. In the swiss military you have to switch off your brain, because you do lot of useless shit like following: If you walk by someone who has a higher grade you always need to salute him. The type of salutation changes of the type of how many personnes are walking by and if they are all or if there are 8 or less than 8 personnes. If you want to talk to a higher grade person, it becomes funny, let's say - you are a recruit and the other person is a sergeant - you would need to salute him like "sergeant, recruit *my second name*" first, and then you can ask your question. When you've finished, you have to check out, like: "check out myself". When doing this check-in/check-out/salutation thingie, you need to be in correct positions, see here:



Since my free time is very much limited I will only write some parts of it. See you later,


Salutation,

The anonymous swiss recruit