Re: MTD Yardman Transaxle Rebuild
Roger,
Way to go on getting the mower back together. Thank you for your service as a Submariner, when I lived on GUAM (Military dependent at the time) our next door neighbor at the time was one of the few Naval Officers to wear both Submariner and Flight Officer wings. When asked he said "what ever goes up, always comes down but not everything that goes down comes up. I have taken tours on both the older diesel electric boats and a nuke boat. Also took my SCUBA certification at New London and we did a dive in the escape tower. From the top down then back up, not a lock out.
Have a few friends that were Navy tin can operators (ASSW, I think those are the correct letters) so I bet you all could have good chats. ;-)
Tom
Tom,
Guam huh? Land of the Goony Birds! So I take it your Officer buddy was going from "the boats" to aircraft and not the other way around.. Not me, I still hate flying.. We always said, "As long as your number of surfaces equals your number of dives, you're in good shape." Of course as soon as the diving alarm sounded, then you were 'one-up' on your number of surfaces.. But I would not have traded my ten years in 'the boats' for all the tea in China.. Some of the craziest b*st*rds I've ever met were boat sailors, but being crazy may have been a prerequisite for joining the sub service. Navy Seals are crazy too, (I've hung around some at Little Jim's Bridge in Fort Pierce), but they are a different sort of crazy... And not to insult Bert the Mobile-Man, but Aussies are REALLY crazy! Must come from living upside down! We had two Aussie divers paint a pink kangaroo on the upper rudder of the USS Sailfish SS-572 in the middle of the night, when we were in Hong Kong harbor in 1969-1970. We didn't discover it until sunrise the next morning.. Needless to say, our topside deck watch got in the sh*ts and just diving in Hong Kong Harbor qualified the Aussies as being crazy on any number of different levels!
Diving in the escape tower! How cool! Of course that's all gone now, but I understand they are building some sort of replacement. When I did my escape training that famous Navy guy that could hold his breath nearly forever was there. He threw a pair of Navy sneakers that were tied together with their laces in the tank - (they sank like a rock!!) - then he jumped in and s-l-o-w-l-y pulled himself down one of the cables, all 113' to the bottom, calmly untied the laces, put on the sneakers, retied the laces and then s-l-o-w-l-y came back up! To say I was impressed, would be an understatement! I started diving around 1960 and went to Divers Training School in Fort Lauderdale in 1963. I qualified as SCUBA Instructor and Commercial Shallow Water Diver. (Never did either as a business.) (How did you like the mermaids painted on the tank walls? - I didn't really get to see them, as I had no mask and everything was blurry.)
The acronym you are looking for is just ASW (Anti-Submarine-Warfare - unless the "skimmers" use another name) and submarines are actually the "point of the spear" in that business. I taught at FLTASWSCOL in San Diego for the last three years of my service.
What diesel boats did you tour?
Thank you for your recognition and for your service as a First Responder..
Roger
PS. I am going to do some 'body work' on the Yardman. The front has some minor dents and I'm going to try to pound them out and refinish it.. I guess I can continue to post that work here. The whole thread has sort of wandered from one subject to another and anybody that has bothered to read it might want to follow along with the rest of the project.
