Introduction

Hello!

For those who do not know me, my name is Trenton Reding and for the past six years I've been employed with KIMT's Engineering Department in the Master Control section. Basically Master Control (here after referred to as simply "Master") is the funnel in which all the other aspects of the television station come together and actually hit the air waves. Daily duties in Master consist of ingesting commercial spots into the computer system that we air programming from, making sure our transmitters are within FCC guidelines, running periodic Emergency Alert System tests, airing weather-related crawls on the bottom of your screen, preparing programming for airing, and general quality control to make sure that what the viewers see from KIMT on their televisions is the best it can be. I will admit, we do make mistakes from time to time and probably everyone has seen it happen at least once...the most obvious sign being that for what-ever reasons all you see is black on your screen. That would be someone in Master at either KIMT or CBS in New York making a mistake. For the most part though things run smoothly. For the past year I have also been periodically working as an ENG/Live Truck operator. That means I take out the van with the really tall mast that has what looks like a satellite dish on the top to local events and we transmit news reports back to the station for airing. You may have seen me at a few of the local fairs the past summer working the camera while Adam Frederick or Jim Politis did live Weather segments...I was the guy in the bear cage with Adam at the North Iowa Fair.

However KIMT is only what I do on the civilian side of life. Since January 7, 1994 (excluding a short break from June 2005-January 2007) I have been a member of the Iowa National Guard 1133 Transportation Unit (or 1133 for short). My duties with the 1133 are the basic soldierly (is that a real word?) duties as well as being a wheeled vehicle operator...which is a fancy military way of saying I drive trucks, mainly semis. Most North Iowans, and some Southern Minnesotans, have seen our Freightliners on the road (probably in a convoy) at some point or another. I have to admit, its rather difficult to miss a big tan semi with an air damn on the cab when you're going down the road. Speaking of air damns on semis, the ones with the black horse head/chess Knight...that's my design from when I was with First Platoon during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003-2004.

As you may have heard the 1133 is deploying once again to the Middle East. KIMT and the Iowa National Guard thought it would be a good idea to let me record video insight of our daily lives while deployed and send them back to KIMT. Some of what I send back may be used for broadcast during news programs, some will be posted on here. Along with those daily life segments its also my hope to be able to conduct interviews with some of the more interesting people I encounter. Military personnel, locals to what-ever country we find ourselves in, maybe even some of the international forces if I get really lucky. Either way, I promise to post as much as I can under Operational Security (OPSEC) and Department of Defense (DOD) regulations, and Internet availability. At the least, it is my goal to have something written (hopefully with pictures) and posted here once a week. I can't promise 60 Minutes-style documentaries and investigative reporting, but I can promise a picture of what life while deployed overseas is like.

So, that's me in a nut-shell and why this blog is here. Feel free to leave comments/questions at any time (there's a link at the bottom of each post to click on for leaving them) and I will do my best to respond to them as soon as possible. I might not be able to respond to all of the individually but I will respond.

Hope to be seeing you around, and thank you for stopping by!

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