Patrol Report for WIS 827 Deployment to Green Bay, WI on Friday 14 June 2024.

Thanks to Randy Engness, Commander of the USSVI West Lake Superior Base, we were invited to display WIS 827 at the WI VFW Convention at the Tundra Lodge & Water Park Resort in Green Bay, WI on Friday 14 June 2024.  

WI Veteran special events such as this VFW Convention is an ideal venue to build veteran alliances and supporters.

Gardie LaMarche, with me as his “naviguessor,” arrived in Green Bay on Thursday afternoon, after a stop at The Highground Veterans Memorial Park, near Neillsville, WI, for a meet & greet and tour.  We attended an VFW Awards Ceremony that evening and were introduced to the WI VFW leadership and several former submariners.

On Friday morning, we set up WIS 827 out in front of the Tundra Lodge main entrance next to a water and wildlife feature. We connected the WIS 827 inflation blower to a water feature 120 VAC electrical box at about 0730 and started getting visitor attention of the approximately 250 VFW convention attendees and arriving lodge guests.

At the VFW Convention morning break we had a number of attendees come out to observe WIS 827 and they discussed doing group photos during their convention noon break.

At about 1030 we lost power to our inflation blower from the water feature pedestal outlet.

We immediately went to the lodge front desk and asked to get their maintenance personnel to check to see about restoration of electrical power since we could not determine if we tripped their 120 VAC breaker or if there was a timer controller.  After waiting more than 15 minutes with no lodge assistance, we shifted power to our portable Honda Inverter.  However, after about 20 more minutes we lost the inflation blower again with the Honda Inverter still operating.  We assumed that our inflation blower was failing since we had experienced two independent episodes of inflation blower failure.

We contacted Steve Eisenhauer, former submariner, since Randy Engness was in a working group, to report our WIS 827 casualty and apologized for our “pulling off station” due to a material issue.

While driving back from Green Bay to my farm near Boyceville, I contacted our WIS 827 “Intermediate Maintenance Facility (IMF)” in Burnsville, MN to determine if they had an inflation blower in stock, which they confirmed a few minutes later.  Gardie dropped me off at the farm and I then drove to Landmark Creations facility and picked up a replacement inflation blower.  

Coming back out the twin cities going east on a late Friday afternoon , with construction lane closures over the Interstate 94 St. Croix  River bridge at Hudson, WI was an “adventure!

Changed out WIS 827 inflation blower at “oh-dark-thirty” in preparation for a 0530 “underway” Saturday 15 June for the Deke Slayton Air Fest at La Crosse Regional Airport (KLSE).