N0IXF Stories

Howard Cochran

Cpl USMC

Navy-Marine Corps MARS did not exist when I first reported in to MCAS Cherry Point. All phone patches and communications were handled via our Amateur Radio Station provided by Special Services. The Call Sign at Cherry Point was K4BUJ, The Big Ugly Jarhead. The Ham club would assign operating hours to individual members for the purpose of running phone patches to the various stations that we kept in contact with. Most were Marine bases, however we would also run patches to and from bases on various islands in the Pacific and once in a while ships afloat. I can remember one day, WO Dick Timmons, now a Silent Key, made a schedule with me to stay in contact with him on HF while he made a flight in a GV (now known as a C-130) as he flew from MCAS Cherry Point up to Willow Grove. We managed to maintain contact for the entire trip by changing bands as he got further away from Cherry Point.

While stationed at Cherry Point I was in the NAVAIDS section of Base Communications which would be assigned to H&HS or to SOES depending on what was appropriate at the time. I had a truck with two-way FM radio that I could communicate with the tower so that I could drive up and down or across the runways to reach the TACAN or VOR sites or to go out to the LF Homer/UHF Homer site. These transmitters were used by all aircraft to find their way back to the base and to make initial approaches for instrument work until they were turned over to Radar Traffic Control. I remember my tour of duty at Cherry Point as a fun time and one that I met a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with some forty years later.

After being discharged from the Marine Corps on 1-DEC-62 I returned to my home town of Terre Haute, Indiana and enrolled at Indiana State University. I graduated in May of 1965 with a BS in Math and entered Graduate school and received an MS in Physics in August of 1967. Sept of 1967 I joined General Electric as a design engineer and moved around the company and finally retired after 28 years as a Region Sales Manager for the Industrial Equipment Division in 1995. Since then I have worked some short term jobs, but have been rebuilding my 1946 Aeronca 7AC "Champ" for the past four years. On May 25th, I flew it for the first time after a four year ground up rebuild. Along the way I picked up my Commercial Pilots license and multi-engine and instrument ratings.

Ham radio is the thread that binds us all together as Marines and radio operators wherever we may be stationed on this globe of ours.

I would like to see K4BUJ re-established at MCAS Cherry Point. It would be a shame for someone else to collect this as a vanity call. WE need for it to be back where it belongs, just inside the gate from Havelock, NC.

Good Health to all and Thank God for the Marines.

Semper Fi