Terrible old photos from the 70s

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67Dart273

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Found these dirty old 35mm slides


My 63 SS I bought in early spring of 70, drove from N Idaho (on leave) to Miramar. Later bought my 69RR, no photos of it

My 70's original owner, an amateur radio op friend of mine. George, K7WWA, still has his original callsign. He'd trophied in pure stock, at Lions I think. The car was nearly new then, didn't have wheels, headers, nothing.

Yours truely when he was one hell of a lot younger. Somewhere around 72. I'd have been about 23-24. You'll notice there are no "duster trails" on the car then. That's because some girl a-holed the car, and it had been repainted. There was a little argument going on with the insurance, and I left them off to make up the difference.

My girlfriend back then. I'd really like to find her, we lost touch.

A busy day at the RADAR site. This was out near the "far end" of the runways, and we who worked there had permission to work on our cars. Everybody else here this day was friends at the time.

The cuda is a guy in one of the squadrons, don't remember his name. The black 64 and my limelight 70 are there. In between was my friend Dave, 68 RR The Nova? Ponch? was one of our other techs

Last, the junkyard low miles 340 which I swapped into the 70 in 73? This was a combo Mopar SHOULD have built. This was when it had barely been installed, and I was BROKE. Later put headers, aluminum valve covers (which are on the Dart today!!) and the obligatory chrome air filter.
 

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Those pics are awesome. I wish I took more pics "back in the day." Nowadys I take thousands on the average project.
 
I think old pics like that are awesome....I have a ton of old pic's from the seventies somewhere.....
 
Most of mine are damaged or literally destroyed. I suffered a house fire about '03, and the smoke damage was terrible. Even these show more than the normal "age yellowing" from that damage.
 
Really cool pics! I won't tell you how old I was when those were taken. (Hint: I was born in '75) Just out of curiosity, what was your rate? I was an AT, and spent a few months at Miramar in '97 going to school. I really wish I could have seen it when it was Fightertown, USA, but by the time I got there the Marines had already landed.
 
Really cool pics! I won't tell you how old I was when those were taken. (Hint: I was born in '75) Just out of curiosity, what was your rate? I was an AT, and spent a few months at Miramar in '97 going to school. I really wish I could have seen it when it was Fightertown, USA, but by the time I got there the Marines had already landed.

I was an ETR-2, headed for E-6 but not enough time before I got discharged. Our shop was out around Queen 6 off the high speed taxiway. If the boresight range was still there when you were, our shop was nearly off the back end of the building.

At the time I was there, we had two QUAD RADARs, (FPN-36) and an FPN-52, the remote precision RADAR version of the old CPN-4, as well as an SPN??41 which I never worked on, separate crew, and before I left, whatever the new digital "fly by needles" stuff was installed experimentally. They would not put me on that either, as I was leaving soon, last year I was there.

They used to land just about everything imaginable there at one time or another, including C-5s, and the old PSA had a contract to land there if Lindbergh was fogged in. This was great, as we'd have to get out, check the RADAR, and the PSA flight would land. We'd go up to the tower snack bar and have coffee, and flirt with the stews and college girls who were always on those flights. Then they'd bus everybody downtown.

In the photo below, our shop was about where the curser arrow is. TACAN is or was to the left of that in the little "dead end" street to the west (left.)

I damn near got wiped off that TACAN tower, and also damn near killed myself a civilian. We were removing the antenna for maintenance, and a weekend crew, evidently an unqualified driver, came into the TACAN lot and started a big U turn to get the stick headed towards the tower. This was a crane on an old 6x6. or maybe 8x8. The crane op was beeping his pathetic little (Roadrunner!!) horn frantically, and the driver FINALLY stopped, but the momentum banged the stick into the tower. I came down off that ladder about 6 rungs at a whack, and I was gonna flat have at it with that driver. One of my buddies on the ground was able to stop me. This thing was about 40' or so tall, 4 legged free standing tower. As near as I can tell, that is the very same tower today. I don't remember the designator anymore, but it was "all vacuum tubes, all the time!!"
 

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Wow those are WAY before I was born let alone a twinkle in my parent's eye.
 
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