"Throwing a rod(s)"

No kiddin. I didn't go to TACAN school, and we were pretty overloaded with techs at Miramar. Consequently the guys trained on TACAN carried most of the load. We did help maintain it. The old TACAN site I used to "know" is still there, I don't know if it's active. The Marines have poured concrete over where our old shop was.

The 36's were great little RADARs and were never intended for full time use. Ours were hard stand mounted. It was alleged we had the tripods stored somewhere, I never saw them.

I was nearly wiped off the TACAN tower by a "crab" crane truck driver who came into the pad, did a "yuie" and smacked the side of the tower with the stick. I was ready to kill myself a driver!!

I don't remember the designator of our TACAN, they were older "all tube" units from shipboard service. There were two switchable units for reliability.

Might have been the ARN-52, I think the next was ARN-84 and much later the ARN-118. Tacan techs were a dime a dozen at Whidbey, Barbers Pt. too, I did IFF and Radios primarily. I remember seeing your tower horror story in another post, if you didn't kill that guy you did good.