1976/1981

Offutt AFB, Nebraska

During my tour at Loring AFB, I was selected by Hq SAC for the SAC MSET team at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. MSET is SAC talk for Maintenance Standardization and Evaluation Team. The team visited every SAC base every year and evaluated the aircraft maintenance quality at that base. We were also responsible for all Technical Order changes that applied to SAC assets. It meant a lot of traveling. We were "on the road" every-other week for a week. Great job. Tremendous responsibility. I loved it.

After coming from Alaska, and Maine, I joked that Offutt was my "southern tour". Omaha Nebraska was a great place to raise children. The job with Hq SAC was fantastic for me. Besides travelling with the "Eval" team to every SAC base, I also represented the SAC/LG at navigation system Tech Pub meetings, Program Reviews, Source Selections, Maintainability Demonstrations, etc, etc, etc. It was a good tour. That is how I discovered Honeywell in Clearwater, and found that they were dedicated to product quality. After my USAF retirement, I went to work for them. Honeywell produced the "SPN-GEANS" INS, the most accurate INS ever built. I made MSgt at Offutt. I was retired from the USAF on 1 March, 1981. When I retired, I had a line number for E-8 and an assigment to Athens Greece. I had promised that I would get out after 20 years, so, I kept my promise.

This was NOT one of the smartest things that I ever did (Don't ask).

We had a great home in Bellevue, Nebraska. The house was very old, and it sat on about an acre. Lots of room to play and to garden. In the back yard there was a 200+ year old elm tree, an apple tree, an American cherry tree, and a plum tree. The cherries were tart and EXCELLENT for pies. Below are pics of the camper that we owned there, that great back yard, a photo of Sean in the garden, and a photo of Brian sitting on top of Sean just to show how tall my sweet corn was getting. That garden in Nebraska was the best that we ever had. That 1967 Galaxie 500 that you see in the first pic was an amazing car. We bought that car in Kentucky, and then put about a zillion miles on it in Oklahoma, Alaska, Maine, and Nebraska. The last photo shows Brian, Tom, and Sean bottle feeding some baby cotton tails that they found in the back yard. Those wee bunnies were toooooooo cute.

Below are the typical SAC MSET unit patches:

And here are some not-so-typical patches from some of the projects that I worked on for the SAC/LG while I was at Offutt:

For a few more Nebraska pics -- Click here