Wake Up, Sir!
by Will Honea
The Class of '64 in Third Squadron has an extensive list of, shall we say, innovative activities. For some strange reason, if one of those activities involved electrical/electronic elements I seemed to be immediately suspect. While it pales in comparison such shenanigans as climbing the flag pole to tie on a flag, I well recall a much simpler effort involving a SAC alert klaxon and the AOC's office.
It seems that someone in the class had obtained the aforementioned klaxon and brought it back without any clear plan for its' use. Now, that klaxon was not just your every day noise maker - it had an output in excess of 100 db and was meant to be HEARD when it sounded. After considerable discussion, it was decided that an appropriate mounting location would be under the AOC's desk. This was shortly after the AOC's office was moved to a room in the Squadron area, so access was simple but it would be ineffective if all that was needed to silence it was to just pull the plug. A trigger to initiate it was also needed so a simple relay triggered by turning on the desk lamp seemed appropriate. With a little wiring, the relay could be made to latch on once triggered so that simply turning the lamp off would not release the relay and the klaxon would sound until the plug that was powering the thing was found and pulled. Running the power cord up to the floor above made locating it considerably more difficult.
Needless to say, when the AOC sat down at Oh Dark Hundred and turned on his lamp there were a few minutes of raucous racket followed by a visit from a now wide awake AOC....
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