Have Tool Kit, Will Travel. . .To Iraq!

When broadcasting equipment goes down, Stuart Peters and his field service team at Broadcast Electronics quickly move in to repair it. While that is usually a routine assignment, the job took an interesting turn in April when Peters flew to war-torn Iraq to get a military-run AM station back on the air.

The call for help came from the military in March. Stuart, who is the RF (radio frequency) customer service manager for BE?and a civilian?asked to go. "Nobody else volunteered," he explains, and even if someone had, he says, "I wouldn't want to send any of my guys into harm's way."

While Peters would normally jump on a plane and immediately go to any BE client that needed help, this trip, he says, "took a little while to put together." There are, he notes, "a lot more hoops you have to jump through when you're traveling in a war zone."

One of those hoops was a kidnapping-avoidance class mandated by BE's insurance carrier. Among the not-so-helpful tips Peters learned: "If you're kidnapped, the first thing you should try to do is get away."

While he knew other contractors working in Iraq had been kidnapped, Peters says he felt relatively safe knowing he would have a military escort almost the entire time.

Peters, who has worked for BE since 1988, traveled from the company's headquarters in Quincy, Ill., to Kuwait and, ultimately, to Ramadi, about 30 miles west of the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

His mission was to repair a low-power AM station that had been established by the U.S. Marines as a way to combat propaganda from Iraqi insurgents. The station?the first in a planned network of similar facilities in Iraq?broadcasts legitimate local news and government updates, in Arabic, to the local population on the 864 kHz frequency. BE was just awarded the government contract to supply equipment for all of the stations.

At one time, the Ramadi station had been broadcasting to the population of Iraq's Al Anbar province. And despite sandy terrain that is not conducive to carrying AM signals, it had a reported reach of about 70 miles at night, and covered Fallujah with its signal during the day.

When it came time for an upgrade, BE sent one of its 10kW AM transmitters. Local engineers began installing it, but abandoned the project as fears of insurgent attacks rose. The partially installed equipment had also been improperly set up and was experiencing dangerous, high-voltage power surges that had prevented it from being operated for about seven months.



THE ROAD TO BLUE DIAMOND

Peters' adventure began when he flew via commercial airline to Kuwait City. From there, he was to take a C-130 military transport plane and then a helicopter to reach the Camp Blue Diamond U.S. military base. The base is headquartered in the once-beautiful former retreat palace of Saddam Hussein's late son, Uday, which was damaged by U.S. bombs during the first days of the war. The camp is located on the Euphrates River directly across the river from Ramadi.

Last year Peters had flown to Kuwait to help the Kuwaiti government install new transmitters, so that part of the trip was not new to him. Getting to Kuwait was the easy part. From there, his attempts to get to Iraq proved frustrating.

In the days after his arrival in Kuwait, Peters made the hour-and-a-half journey with his military escorts from the military encampment where he was staying to the Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait eight separate times. Seven of those times the flights he was scheduled to take were canceled due to bad weather, political or fighting conditions or mechanical problems. He would then take another 90-minute ride back to camp, only to try it again later that same day or the next. He says those drives were the only time he ever slept.

By this point, he says, the whole experience "was getting a little old."

On one of the trips, he actually got so far as to board an aircraft, until technical difficulties caused the flight to be aborted.

Meanwhile, the broadcasters at Camp Blue Diamond, who were inquiring about his whereabouts, were mistakenly told that Peters had hopped a plane to Jordan and was not coming.

Finally, on his eighth attempt, a C-130 flew Peters 400 miles to Al Asad air base in Iraq's Al Anbar province. From there, a CH-46 dual-rotor helicopter took him the remaining 70 miles to Camp Blue Diamond.

Flying at dusk, Peters recalls the helicopter ride as one of the most memorable moments of his trip. "It looked peaceful from the air," he says, "but there is definitely something going on there."

Outfitted in a bulletproof vest and a helmet, Peters says the helicopter flight was also the only time during the trip when he felt fearful. "As we got toward the border the [military] guys started loading up and cocking their guns in case they had to fire at anyone," he recalls. "That was the first time I really thought 'I'm in a war zone here.' " Prior to that, he says, there had been times he could hear incoming mortar fire. "But it didn't sink in until they had their guns at the ready."

Despite his troubles getting to Camp Blue Diamond, once he arrived Peters made short work of his job, getting the station repaired in just four hours.

With the main problem fixed, and with little else to do, Peters then helped the station's staff with other technical issues, including eliminating some audio bleeding into the station's microphones and phone lines. He then tried to help the staff of the American Forces Radio Service station?which broadcasts out of the same trailer as the station he had been brought in to repair?with a problem it was having.

"I kept busy to keep my mind off things," Peters says.

He recalls with amusement that the Marines and Navy personnel he was working with felt compelled to tell him that every loud boom he was hearing was outbound?not incoming?fire. "They thought I would be more jumpy than I was."

Peters did have some good luck on his trip. At the time, the U.S. forces were engaged in an offensive taking place along the Syrian border. And while the fighting had been fierce, it abated for the five days he was in Iraq, resuming the day after he left. "I never got fired on the whole time," he says.

He also just missed a sandstorm that blew in the day after he left Camp Blue Diamond, reducing visibility to just 20 feet. It would have prevented his departure had he stayed one more day.

And while he was scheduled to be overseas for two weeks, Peters was actually in Iraq just five days.

"Some of it is still a blur," Peters says of the trip. "It's hard to believe I was there and did that."

And it is not the first time his job has provided him with an exciting experience. In 1995 he was sent to the Vatican to do some training for Vatican Radio. While there, he got to meet the pope.

"That photo in my office of me and the pope stops people in their tracks," he says.

Now, Peters has photos from his visit to a war zone to add to his wall of memories. ????