November 13, 2002

Good day everyone from up here in Cold Lake.
At the moment, in the shop we have Sgt Tim Hope, MCpl Dave Salisbury, Cpl Meadus, Cpl Dave Bonne,(a reservist attached to us from Winnipeg) and myself Cpl Rudy Skalaa. Also on base in the Design Cell is WO Bob Shingh.
In the past few months we posted out MCpl Moe Morin to CFJSR Det Edmonton and received MCpl Salisbury from the above mentioned Det. Sgt Tim Hope is on deployment in Bosnia for 6 months, and will return sometime in the New Year.
Do to the shortage of people our workload keeps us extremely busy. The Line & Tel Services shop work closely together on all projects. We take care of all line maintenance both on the Base and out on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR), which is approximately 50 km's away from the main base. There appears to be new buildings being built in both areas on a constant basis. The shop also supports crews from CFJSR. At present, a crew from Kingston is on site conducting cable upgrades for the Base until the end of November. A crew from Edmonton will arrive this month for Antenna Maintenance so we have lots of linemen in and out (Lucky them).
We also support a multi national exercise called Maple Flag (#36) every summer, which is our busiest time. This brings in a couple of thousand pilots, and aircrew from all over the world. They work out of about 60 ATCO trailers in areas all over the base, which we bring communication services to, and remove, at the end of exercise. This takes a lot of coordination and communication with all of the organizations on the base.
We are a busy bunch way up here, but there is no other way to be, 052!
On closing, we would like to wish everyone and their families Happy Holidays and best wishes take care.