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MCOC hosts Radome tour

By SSgt. Alan Hubbard
301st IS
Misawa AB, Japan

Space, the final frontier.

These are the voyages of Sollars Elementary school students. Their continuing school work mission -- to learn and explore, To boldly go where not too many others have been -- inside a Misawa Cryptologic Operations Center radome.

It started with an e-mail announcement advertising the upcoming third annual National Space Day celebration.

The Misawa chapter Air Force Association was soliciting volunteers and ideas to help make this year’s Friends of Space Day a great success.

Why not give tours and briefings of the MCOC to local students. I remembered I loved taking field trips when I was in the sixth grade – anything to get out of class right? This was an opportunity for the MCOC to provide some insight into space and satellite communications to some of Misawa Air Base’s kids and possible future space pioneers.

I posed the idea to the MCOC’s Physical Security personnel and to the owning maintenance work center.

The MCOC Director, Col. Cook, was simultaneously interested in a radome tour and told his folks to “make it happen.”

I contacted Maj. Herman, vice president of the Misawa chapter Air Force Association and point of contact for the Misawa Space Day celebration.

Herman forwarded the proposal to the elementary schools.

Sollars Elementary liked the idea and wanted to bus students up to Misawa’s “Security Hill” for the tours in conjunction with a picnic at Leftwich Park.

After a couple of weeks of coordination and logistical information exchange, 116 students and seven teachers toured the facilities.

SSgt. Warren Ary, Satellite Systems Maintenance technician, provided the briefings and tours inside the MCOC’s largest radome. There were lots of gaping mouths looking at the massive antenna structure.

The students left with an appreciation and better understanding of space and satellite communications – definitely from the visual perspective.

Possible someday, some of them will actually get to visit outer space or work in the space and satellite field – and not just in science fiction television shows or movies.

It’s a big world out there, and hopefully we’ve helped them on their journey.