July 13th

Sam Hale of AFRTS has finished a draft of the history of AFRTS TV and radio. It is 28 great pages of reading so please take some time and check it out. If you like it, fire off an email to Sam and thank him for his great effort in putting this together. I have posted two versions of it in Microsoft Word format so you should be able to download and view it. If you have trouble please let me know and I'll make sure you get a copy.

June 10th

I received a new roster registration that made me have a double take. Allen Fritz put down 64-73 as his tour time and I verified that with him. Sure enough, Allen worked at Stonehouse and arrived in Asmara May 1964. He didn't leave until June 1973! I checked with my good friend Lee Ruebush, who had tours of 58-60, 61-65 and 67-70 and he told me he was at Kagnew for 10 years. That should give him the record for most time at Kagnew. But Allen definitely has to have the record for longest, single tour. In almost 15 years of doing this page I don't remember anyone even coming close!

January 5th (updated)

As I previously reported, the upgrade to the new hosting package has been completed with no problem. The important result of this is an expansion from 3GB of storage to 500GB, a huge jump. I also have an unlimited bandwidth, important when downloading some of the large files I'll now be able to post.

I've always worried about filesizes of the graphics and limited any videos to post so this should be enough to hold me for a few years to come. I've also added other things I've wanted to do like the FAQ and blog (Check the Bulletin Board for the latest on this) last month, and will now be able to pursue those options.

As a sample of things to come, I've uploaded one of the pictures from Ralph Reinhold's purchase (from the DVD we've been selling) in it's fully scanned size and resolution. It's in .png format and I have tested it in Firefox 3.5 and Microsoft IE8 with no problem. This image is 3.44MB in size and is 3000 pixels wide. The average computer monitor resolution is around 1000 pixels wide so this image will be 3 times as wide as your monitor. You will have to scroll side to side to see it all. It's an amazing picture so click the link below to see it. (By the way, I will not be uploading all the pictures to protect Ralph's rights to them)

You can also right-click the link and select Save Link As (Firefox) or Save Target As (IE) and save it to your hard drive to view locally. That way you only download it once and will be able to view it quickly as often as you'd like.

One other thing, I have added the Blog and FAQ pages to the line of links just above the Hot News image link.

Thanks for your continued support of the page so it can continue to grow.

November 24th

White House Executive Order

Employment of Veterans in the Federal Government

October 14th

Mariano Bossetti recently sent in pics for the Government Documents page and I need to contact him. If you read this Mariano or someone knows how to contact him, please email me using the link at the bottom of the home page.....thanks, Rick

September 3rd

A few minutes ago the Kagnew Home Page reached another milestone, half a million visitors since I started the counter in the summer of 1997! Compared to sites that get millions a day that doesn't sound like much. But we have a limited and I'll say unique group so I'm proud of that number. Thanks to everyone who has stopped in over the years, only another half million to go!

July 30th

Dave Nelson has sent in several Kagnew Gazelles and I now have them all online. There is a lot of good information in these so take some time and read them all. I learned some new things about Kagnew, and I hope to go back and use them as reference for other pages on the site. You can check them out on the Gazelle page.

Thanks a lot Dave!

June 18th

I've always said I wanted to expand the Sports area because there just isn't much there. I'm going to start a pilot page on motorcycle racing, with the help of Jim Ferris, who was president of the Blue Knights motorcycle club and also wrote a column about motorcycles ("The Cycle Analyst") for the Kagnew Gazette.

If you have any pictures or stories about motorcycle racing at Kagnew, please email me so you can be included on this page.

Please note there is already a page to show pics of your ride, this is one is specifically for the motorcycle racing.

As time goes on I will expand the Sports area to include auto racing, softball, basketball and whatever sport I can gather enough information for a page.

April 24th

Al Rayl (58-64 HQ Co.) has come up with a great looking patch for you ASA guys. The patches come with a heat adhesive on the back so they can be put on a hat or jacket with a heat press or heavy iron.

They are in and Al has been shipping them. The price will be $5.00 which includes mailing costs. All information is posted on the Classifieds page.

Click to view larger image

Update..Al sent me one of the patches and I have to say the quality is outstanding. If you are an ASAer and would like a great looking patch, contact Al and he'll take care of you-Rick

February 23rd

I have added a new twist to the Maps page. If you hover the mouse over certain buildings, you will see a popup window with an image of that building. As time permits I will add this to every building I have pictures for. Hope you like this shortcut to seeing the buildings.

Note: Make sure your browser allows popups and javascript for the Kagnew web page or this won't work.

November 22nd

(New 12/16) - I have placed an entire envelope (#26) of pictures on the Kagnew DVD page. These are inside and outside of Tract B where I worked with STRATCOM in 69 and 70. Image 5 is the patch panel in the receiver room where I spent 18 months. These images have been reduced to 800 pixels wide from the original 5000 pixel scans, 16% of the original size so you can imagine what they look like!

(New 12/03) - I have placed a page on the server with a few samples. You can view them at Kagnew DVD page.

I have been in contact with Ralph Reinhold today and we will be making available a DVD of the Kagnew pictures he purchased on ebay. They cost nearly $1,000 so this will help him defray the cost of that purchase.

There were 30 envelopes of 8 by 10 glossy official government photographs along with some Gazelle pages. A lot of them had to do with the construction of some of the sites, parades, official events, etc. They are fantastic photos and I plan to start posting them on the web page so you will see exactly what we're talking about.

While you will be able to see them on the web page, they will not even come close to the original that will be on the DVD. Each original will be in .tif format so you can get the full quality of the scan and are 3000 pixels wide, as opposed to about 600-800 for the images that will be posted. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, here is a reduced image of a parade marching behind the chapel. The second picture is the cannon in full size from the original so you can get a feel of the size of the original. These originals would be great if you wanted to take them to your local kiosk or store and get a print made.

I can't post the originals because of their size, and the fact that each file is around 14-16 megs in size! But this example shows you the difference.

The cost of the DVD will be $20, which covers the DVD with Kagnew graphics burned on it, 3.8 gigs of pictures, a CD case, mailing envelope and postage. Proceeds above the cost of getting it to you will go to Ralph to help pay for his cost in purchasing them.

If you are interested in purchasing one of these DVDs, or if you just have a question about these pictures, please contact me and I'll email you the details.

October 9, 2008

Jack Gallagher sent me a link to an online article and I have since had four more send it in so I wanted to pass it along. The article is called "Recalling La Dolce Vita in Eritrea" and can be found online at the NY Times web site. There is an article and a 5-minute video so enjoy it.

August 26, 2007
After passing my 10 year anniversary of doing this page, there is another milestone. Just before 5:00 pm today, the ticker broke the 400,000 mark.

Thanks to everyone for making it possible. 400,000 visitors in 10 years! Think we can all make to the million mark?
Thanks for everything,
Rick

*** IMPORTANT - August 20, 2007
In case you haven't noticed, I've gotten back to working on the Kagnew map and added 8 locations today. This map is where you will see an architect's drawing of Kagnew with hotspots you can click and see pictures and information about that building. This has been quite a project over the past few years and there is still a lot of work ahead so I hope you like it.

Now the important part: I NEED YOUR HELP! If you have "ANY" pictures of Kagnew buildings inside and out, I need them for this map. And I also need your knowledge about the buildings. If you were involved with a building on the map and I don't have information about it yet, let me know. There are some buildings I was never in which would apply to most of us, but with everyone's help, we should be able to identify every building and it's use.

I also know over the years that some buildings changed purpose, most likely in barracks assignments, so any help you can give me will be useful. So....if you have any information or pictures that you'd like to share with everyone about Kagnew, email me. Nothing is trivial, everything is important. Get involved and be part of this project.
Thanks, Rick

August 1, 2007
Recently I asked everyone to email me with your request to access the message boards because of spammers. I've tried to make it a little easier by providing a registration form on the Message Board page. If you haven't yet signed up for the Message Boards, just fill out the form with your information and I'll get on the way to getting in. Thanks for your patience with this little bit of extra effort, it pays off keeping the boards clean.

June 23, 2007
I have completed scanning an original copy of "A History of Kagnew Station and American Forces in Eritrea" by John Rasmuson and posted it on the History page. I have created a new history page that has a link to the web pages I created years ago from a copy and another link to the scanned copy of the original book. Hope you enjoy seeing the book in it's original form.

September 13, 2006

Another milestone.

Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

I recently received a roster submission and at the time I believe we had set the record for the oldest, living ex-Kagnewite. With regret, I have learned that BG Orman Goodyear Charles passed away at a young 98 years of age.

His daughter said he was not really familiar with computers, but was learning and was able to view some of the information here on the web site! She also told me he was the Commanding Officer at Kagnew from 1954 until 1957, which would have been the earliest days of Kagnew's existence.

I will be posting his obituary as a tribute on the Memorial Wall page very soon. BG Charles is a man that was a huge part of Kagnew Station history. Our condolences to the family.

Kagnewite Paul Betit has written a book call "Kagnew Station" and would like everyone to know it is available for sale. Information can be found on the new Classifieds For Sale page. If you haven't been on this page, there is also information about a book Ed White has written about his experiences at Kagnew during his tour and when he returned. Give these guys a shot and check out their books.

I was able to purchase a Kagnew Gazelle from the day after the Kagnew dedication ceremony in 1953 and it is now online on the Gazelles page.

Don't miss this special Gazelle!!

It's looks like the Kagnew page is noting two significant items. First, I have just passed my 9th anniversary of doing this page. It seems like just yesterday that I contacted John Harris about it and then Dennis Horner came along and we teamed up to grow the page. And now, the visit total will break 300,000 since taking over. I think that's amazing considering the page probably hasn't scratched the surface of finding all those out there that served at Kagnew. The numbers keep going up and the page keeps going, so it looks as if I'll start thinking about that 10th anniversary next summer and trying to do something special. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for their continued support, emails, letters, stories, pictures etc. I could never dream of doing something like this without the input from all of you. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

Update August 22, 2005
Thanks to everyone for stopping by and setting another milestone --

Another big milestone for the Kagnew Home Page. Ronnie Ruffner, an ASA type today became the 2000th person registered on the Kagnew roster. Ronnie was an 058 and 76Y at Kagnew during 1960-63 while working at Tract C. He tells me he moved to supply at HQ after he married a local girl. Welcome to the page Ronnie and congratulations on being # 2000!

I've posted a communications map showing Kagnew's circuits on the Maps page. It is incomplete but I will be updating it as more information comes in. Check it out!

August 6, 2004
The following image says it all!

Since I began counting visits to the Kagnew page sometime in 1998, the page has gone over the quarter million mark! I think that's quite a milestone. The page continues to grow and the July numbers alone show nearly 10,000 visitors! Back in the early days a few hundred a month was good.

The page is about to break another milestone and that is 2,000 people listed on the roster. I have an early roster page printed out from mid-1997 and there were 46 names on it. Just think what it would be like if we'd had the internet capability we have now 20 or 30 years ago!

Thanks to all of you for making this possible.

I have been in contact with Hans van der Splinter in the Netherlands and he is sending me a map of Asmara which I plan to post as soon as it arrives. Hans also tells me that he has a terrific web site with pictures and narration from his trips to Eritrea so you absolutely need to check this page out! It is called Eritrea.be and you can find it at:

http://www.eritrea.be/.

You can also check out his other great site at: http://www.asmera.nl/asmara.htm

For those of you who served at Kagnew from late 1967 and after, Bill Cloud has sent in an article from the November 10, 1967 Kagnew Gazelle. The article, entitled "Massawa R&R Center Has Gala VIP Opening" tells us about the grand opening of the new hotel. And something I didn't know and no one has filled me on was the name chosen. We always called it TTU and I was never aware it had a name! Check out this great article on the Kagnew Station Gazelle Page.

Thanks to Bruce Riccitelli Co. A, 05K, Tract C 1968-70 we now have a new Kagnew Gazelle from 10 October 1969. He sent it in because there's an article about his band "The Blues Expression" (see Entertainment page) but there's also a great article about the water shortage most of us experienced. Along with other sports articles etc. Check it out at Kagnew Station Gazelles Page.

After a recent phone conversation with Zazz (George Zasadil ASA), he enlightened me about what "ditty-boppers" did while at Kagnew. So I thought it would be cool to put together a page that would translate English into Morse code.

Only after I got it finished and working did Zazz tell me there was once a web site that did that and also produced the sound. After a little searching on the web, I found a great site, so here is the link to check that out:

http://www.omnicron.com/~ford/java/NMorse.html

I will also be placing this on the "Links" page, so if anyone has a problem getting to it, let me know so I don't keep a bad link on the page.

Thanks to the sponsors and the new web site, I have completed the posting of pictures from Lee Ruebush's 2000 trip to Eritrea. At last count I have 138 pictures and the wait was worth it. There are some terrific pictures so don't overlook them. Warning though! Because I now have plenty of disk space for new pictures I have not reduced these in size too much. Most of them are in the 800 to 1000 pixel wide size, which means you will have to bump up your computer resolution or scroll to the right to see the entire picture. I am set at 1024 by 768 resolution and it's perfect. You'll see what I mean when you look at them. The impact of the larger pictures is definitely worth the time to download them. Kind of like the difference between watching a movie on TV or at the theater.

If you want to view them again and again, it would save you time to simply download them to your hard drive and save them.

Please follow the link to check this out, there are some great pictures.

If you were sent to Asmara around 1950, you would have been stationed at Radio Marina and been issued a copy of the "Handbook of Eritrea." Jerry Pry has provided the Kagnew Home Page with a copy of the handbook and you can now see all of it on the Documents Page. It is a great book to learn about Eritrea and Radio Marina at the time so don't miss stopping by that page and reading it.

Lee Ruebush has returned from a great journey to Asmara and has sent us a letter describing his trip. Don't miss reading this to get an update on life in Asmara 2000.