I first saw Ray in Tech school. He was an EW like me, a few weeks ahead of me. He carried his forearms pulled up, like a velociraptor preparing to strike, and he swung his hips in a shuffling washing machine motion as he walked. He was tall and had an unruly mop of red hair and snaggle teeth. My first impression was to shout, "Hey you! Get out of my Air Force!" But I didn't know him except to see, and never talked to him.
Ray got to RAF Bentwaters probably about the time I did. He was assigned to one of the AGS squadrons (flight-line). There was a big shuffle in 1985 when they moved all the -131 pods over to Woodbridge, and brought all the -119's to Bentwaters. The AGS saw their chance to get Ray off the flight-line and leaped at it, he was just too dangerous to be allowed to work around aircraft without adult supervision. So Ray ended up in my shop.
Don't get me wrong, Ray Konopelski was a nice guy, just a little odd, and people tended to avoid him. Some called him Ray Kinda-dumb-ski. He tended to eat a lot of fiber, and Dean Sanchez observed, "Ray, you fart like a duck!" Ray was also reasonably bright, if you just explained things in a frame of reference he understood. I taught him system theory by pretending the schematics were a great dungeons and dragons map on the quest to jam the evil radar.
So one day we got a call to download a pod on the transient alert pad, which was on the other side of the runway from most of the maintenance shops. This was a three man evolution, requiring a truck with a pod trailer and an MJ-4 bomb lift, called a Jammer. The Jammer's top speed was about 10 mph. To get to the transient pad, you had to go around the base perimeter road, past Commie Corner, and tie up traffic the whole way on a turning two-lane road.
So they get there and do their download thing, and they tell Ray, who was driving the Jammer, "Okay Ray, we'll see you at the shop in about a half-hour!"
They pull up to the shop, and are barely out of the truck when here comes Ray on the jammer! "Holy God, Ray, how did you get here so fast?"
"Oh, I just took a shortcut!" he waved his hand at the runway.
"You crossed the Active Runway. Without permission. With A-10's landing. And no one noticed. You lucky, stupid son of a bitch."
It was worse than that. We found out later that a 2 star general was 15 minutes out on approach. Ray got away clean, no one noticed and we sure as hell weren't going to say anything, but the shop chief de-rated him for jammer driving, and he was known as "Runway Ray" from then on!
Ray got to RAF Bentwaters probably about the time I did. He was assigned to one of the AGS squadrons (flight-line). There was a big shuffle in 1985 when they moved all the -131 pods over to Woodbridge, and brought all the -119's to Bentwaters. The AGS saw their chance to get Ray off the flight-line and leaped at it, he was just too dangerous to be allowed to work around aircraft without adult supervision. So Ray ended up in my shop.
Don't get me wrong, Ray Konopelski was a nice guy, just a little odd, and people tended to avoid him. Some called him Ray Kinda-dumb-ski. He tended to eat a lot of fiber, and Dean Sanchez observed, "Ray, you fart like a duck!" Ray was also reasonably bright, if you just explained things in a frame of reference he understood. I taught him system theory by pretending the schematics were a great dungeons and dragons map on the quest to jam the evil radar.
So one day we got a call to download a pod on the transient alert pad, which was on the other side of the runway from most of the maintenance shops. This was a three man evolution, requiring a truck with a pod trailer and an MJ-4 bomb lift, called a Jammer. The Jammer's top speed was about 10 mph. To get to the transient pad, you had to go around the base perimeter road, past Commie Corner, and tie up traffic the whole way on a turning two-lane road.
So they get there and do their download thing, and they tell Ray, who was driving the Jammer, "Okay Ray, we'll see you at the shop in about a half-hour!"
They pull up to the shop, and are barely out of the truck when here comes Ray on the jammer! "Holy God, Ray, how did you get here so fast?"
"Oh, I just took a shortcut!" he waved his hand at the runway.
"You crossed the Active Runway. Without permission. With A-10's landing. And no one noticed. You lucky, stupid son of a bitch."
It was worse than that. We found out later that a 2 star general was 15 minutes out on approach. Ray got away clean, no one noticed and we sure as hell weren't going to say anything, but the shop chief de-rated him for jammer driving, and he was known as "Runway Ray" from then on!
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