"Throwing a rod(s)"
, 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.
In the Navy, (when I was in) the split ETs into radar or comm somewhere in the ET-A school (Treasure Island) From that point we didn't go to school together and were separated, other than "off" time. At the time I was already a licensed radio amateur, and thought I wanted communications. I'm happy now, the way things worked out, that I got RADAR.
When I got to Miramar, the comm section of the Ground Electronics division was in a building over by the golf course. We rarely went over there!!! We had our own little shop out by the far end of the runways, and NObody ever bothered us out there. At the time, the base maps had the building number on the far edge of the map, (K-274) but the building was "off the map!!!"
The upshot of all this is that I got ZERO experience on comm gear. I would have been ill prepared to be sent out "in the fleet" on a ship.
Division command made a lame effort to broaden the interaction between the different factions at one time, but it happened that at that time we were doing a bunch of equipment upgrades, and trying to do that as well as cross train simply did not work well. Poor timing. At some point "division" abandoned that idea.