How high up are we?

We had to make an expeditious return from the F&S camp because I was due to go TDY that afternoon to White Sands (WSMR). This TDY was going to be the capstone of our SDB GPS jamming work but there was a downside. We had to spool out 3km of cable to use in the test. When I say we had to spool out the cable I don't mean we had to walk behind a machine that lay the cable for us I mean we had to put on gloves that would soon be shreds of fabric and roll the 500lb spool hand-over-hand for 3km. Not a fun job.

When we got to WSMR Maj Hebert said he wanted me to take a few people and set up an smaller site. This was a good deal for several reasons; first and foremost I would not have to deal with that bloody 3km cable. Another cool thing was that I would be in charge of a group and we were essentially hanging out in the mountains all day. The downside was that it was a 3 hour drive each way to the top of the mountain where the site would be located. This meant leaving 3 hours before everybody and getting home a couple hours later, but as long as I didn't have to roll the wheel of torture I was still coming out on top.

A couple of interesting events that transpired during the week. On the fourth night we started down off the 9700ft peak around 8pm. I don't know if it was the dusk hours of the night or some conspiracy that the animals had cooked up but there was a veritable safari out there. It was like someone opened up Noah's Ark on top of the mountain and several species scattered all over. We saw a bunch of deer, one of the largest elk I have ever seen, rattlesnakes, a thousand rabbits, and of course a ton of oryx. Oryx are large antelope that were transplanted from Africa to WSMR about 25 years ago. Without any natural predators they have absolutely flourished, which is amazing because they are not smart animals. They are as dumb as a deer but weigh 3x as much. When you are driving at night and the headlights shine on there red eyes, black faces and long pointy horns, it appears like the devil himself has just jumped in front of your car. On this evening driving home there were a couple dozen oryx that had a tremendous amount of anxiety that made them have to cross the road right now! A least it kept me awake after working 14 hours that day.

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****This section should be skipped by concerned wives and mothers****
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On the last day of testing we were in a bind because there were not enough vehicles for everyone to get to there sites. Since we had all of our equipment set up already we just caught a ride with someone else. This worked great until we had to go home that night. We had to bring back all of our stuff but we didn't have a vehicle to transport it. One of the guys at a nearby site said he had enough room to grab us on his way back. When he picked us up he said he wanted to take all of the equipment that belonged to WSMR not just our stuff. This made for a very tight fit with four large boxes of electronics, tripods and mounting gear, some car batteries, three generators, and three 5gal cans of gasoline in the back of his truck with a shell on the back. Since we didn't have any other way back down and it was about 90deg out there on desert and we were tired, we all piled in.

About 1.5 miles down the mountain on a very tight logging road with sheer cliff sides that when about 2500ft down on both sides we heard something drop in the back. Since I was in the back seat of the king cab truck, I looked back but I didn't see anything. I said if we stopped I would run back and look to see if everything was alright. When I got to the back of the truck I noticed that the sound wasn't that of something falling but the sound of something combusting. Apparently it is not good for gasoline to be stored in airtight containers that start to compress when you loose several thousand feet in elevation driving down the mountain. Also it seems that when gas in these conditions is stored in a semi-airtight camper shell whose temperature has risen to about 150deg is suddenly given a blast of cool mountain oxygen it turns into what can only be described as a Molotov tornado.

After I made one of the dumbest decisions ever to open the back of the truck shell, I went running back to the front to tell everyone to get out because of the fire. The guy driving responed so quickly that he forgot that the car was still in drive and sent the car careening toward the cliff in front of us. The person in the passenger seat jumped in head first to put the car in park. I grabbed the fire extinguisher in the back seat (you know, all government vehicles must have them..."Safety First"). I ran back and drenched the back of the truck with billowy foam. After we had suppressed all of the flames, we inspected the back of the truck to find about 1/32 plastic left on the caps on the cans holding the 15 gallons of gasoline. I can't imagine we had much more than a 10-15 seconds before one of the containers went up in flames. After we got back to base everyone said, "Don't you know when your car starts on fire you just get the hell away from it." Let's see...we loaded 15 gals of gas in the back of a hot car with generators and car batteries...I am thinking nobody was a real safety wiz.