So it finally begins....

Twentynine Palms..... I can't believe i'm back in this place. Quite honestly i'd rather be in Iraq, it's cooler there right now. Besides the fact that the sooner I get over there the sooner I get home. Plus i'd get to see water.

Anyhow, what you're seeing here is the view from outside the fence of the Comm shop, we have to have the fence since we have Crypto equipment and what not in use. The base of the mountains is all training area, ranges and what not, so it can get loud here at times.


It's gotten over 110 a few times since we've been here, but for the most part it's been cooler than normal, if you can consider anything over 100 degrees cool that is.





This is the entrance to the comm shop, Sgt. Vernazza, one of my techs, is crouched down having a smoke. You can see some of the cables running out to our antennas, we have seven VHF antennas, about 20 feet high, takes four Marines to put up, 5 SatCom antennas, and some vehicle mounted antenna that we mounted to 2x4's and zip tied them to the top of the fence poles to get better line of sight for the transmissions.









This is what it looks like inside the Comm Shop. Normally there would be a lot more gear in here, but it was almost all checked out at the time. This is where I have been spending my days on the rare times I can get out of the sun and relax. The only thing that sucks about getting out of the sun is that it's hotter inside!

Me and one of my techs spent a day making AC ducting since we were supposed to get an AC for the shop. We made those ducts out of trash bags, cardboard, and duct tape. Nothing you can't make with plenty of duct tape and a little Marine ingenuity. They gave us an AC that is only supposed to cool 500 Cubic feet though, so it doesn't do anything.

Anyhow, I just bought a new camera to take with me, so I will be posting more photos as I get them. I wish I had bought it before the AAV's and the Tanks had rolled through, that's ok, we've got a Fire Support excercise coming up, hopefully I can get out to our re-trans site and get some pics of the guns going off.

I'm going to try and get some pics of some of the new gear we've been issued, the new Flak jacket and the M4 Carbine in particular. If I can i'll put on our normal patrol load so you all can get an idea of what it's like to go on a dismounted patrol.

I'll be updating this every few days, it's just a lot easier to put all this here and give the address to those interested than it is to try and type twenty different emails. Feel free to keep sending me emails, I will post my new email address here and the new mailing address for Iraq as well. So keep checking back, feel free to leave comments and shoot me a message anytime.

Matt - Matt@yyrband.com or mathew.davis@usmc.mil