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This is a picture of the former NavFac on Midway. My first trip to Midway, in July of 1983, as an employee of Bendix Field Engineering in support the satellite earth station at this facility. By that time, the NavFac was already "remoted" meaning that all ocean monitoring was being analyzed at an alternate facility. In earlier times, the NavFac at Midway was doing their own analyzation of undersea surveillance. During my time, Midway was simply a collection and relay station for undersea activity.
Mdy NavFac.jpg
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This is the satellite earth station that I was first sent to Midway to maintain. Soon after I arrived, we collected local Navy permission to access unused receiver ports on this dish. A good friend of mine, Phil Sierk, an I pooled our personal money together and bought a satellite TV receiver to enable us to experiment with TV reception. We were totally thrilled when we first locked on to HBO, a real homerun!!! All the sudden, we had access to Showtime, Cinemax, CNN and more! All those stations were being broadcasted for free. The only problem was that nothing was aloud to be recorded inside the NavFac and taken from the building, due to security reasons. It was just after the Base Commander was able to watch the Super Bowl, in the NavFac, that he authorized $15,000 for us to expand the TV system to the next step.
Eventually, we had 3 channels of TV, being distributed to all parts of the island. The next problem was trying to keep everyone happy with the 3 selected channels. You can please some of the people, some of the time....
When MPC left Midway last May, we had expanded our TV system to include 14 channels. Since moving back to the mainland, I've learned that people with 100 channels still want more.
Mdy_NavFac_ Dish.jpg
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