I was a proposal manager for Page in the early 60s during the initial buildup of our involvement in Southeast Asia. About mid-morning one Tuesday, Walt Sutter had me meet with representatives from Gates radio who built high-power broadcast transmitters. Weeks before they had received a request for a proposal (RFP) from the US Army Procurement Office for the turnkey supply and installation of a propaganda-broadcast transmitter in South Vietnam, at a location close to the Northern border. It seemed that President Kennedy had visited South Vietnam and given his commitment that the US would help counter North Vietnamese propaganda broadcasts by supplying the South with its own station. The promise had "fallen though the cracks" and nothing had been done on it for months on end.

The RFP called for the design, procurement, shipping, and construction of the site with a wildly optimistic deadline of 90 days. Gates had the equipment on hand but also had a terminal case of cold feet when it came to bidding a construction project on a site in a war zone halfway around the world. On the other hand, Page had extensive experience in building communications systems in Southeast Asia, and already had people there. Thus, after sitting on the RFP for weeks, Gates turned to us at the 11th hour and 59th minute with the suggestion that they could provide the hardware if we bid the job as prime. My involvement: proposal manager. The first question I asked was the bid deadline. The response: the following Friday with no extensions possible-giving us just over three days to write and cost this significant project.

Our proposal team did not leave that building for the next three days. For the most part we subsisted on cold pizzas for breakfast and catnaps on the softer upholstered furniture in the lobby. Our 400-page, two-volume technical and price proposal was hand-carried to the customer's office in Arlington, VA, arriving scant minutes before the appointed 5:00 p.m. deadline. We picked up a letter contract the following Tuesday.

The government had reviewed the proposals (they received two), evaluated and made a final award decision in two working days. The other bidder, Collins, never knew what hit them. They were sure they were the only company who had both the hardware and the installation experience to even bid the job.

There's an interesting postscript to this story. When our construction crew first visited that site near the city of Hue in South Vietnam, they discovered that instead of being dry land, the site was actually a rice paddy, necessitating that berms (water barriers) be built and the paddy drained before construction could begin. All the hardware, including the 100 ft antenna towers, was flown in by military transport. The broadcast station was turned on in 89 days-one day ahead of schedule, proving that work expands (or compresses) as a function of the time available.

Hal Gershanoff

Those interested in military-electronics can visit the Journal of Electronic Defense web site at www.jedonline.com.