Citizen-Airmen Bring Diverse Skills to Selfridge

SELFRIDGE AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, MI, UNITED STATES

06.25.2017

Story by Tech. Sgt. Daniel Heaton 

127th Wing

One weekend a month, all three Airmen come together with the 191st Maintenance Squadron as part of the Michigan Air National Guard. Tech. Sgts. John Kerschenheiter, Crystal Guetschow and Staff Sgt. Alex Bastow are all guidance and control specialists assigned to the KC-135 unit at the base.

Kerschenheiter is a full-time Airmen at the base. He initially worked on F-16 Fighting Falcons, a fighter aircraft, before switching over to the “heavies” – the far larger, multi-engine KC-135 Stratotanker. He was assigned to F-16s both in the active duty Air Force and as a full-time member of the Air National Guard, prior to making the transition.
Guetschow works on avionics systems for the U.S. Customs & Border Protection’s Great Lakes Air & Marine Wing, also based at Selfridge, across the runway from the Air Force operations here. She’s also recently home from an overseas deployment with the KC-135s, where she “picked up a lot of experience working on the jet.”

Bastow works in data analytics for one of Detroit’s three major automakers. He’s also deployed several times with the Michigan Air National Guard.

“It makes for a good team, when we’re at Selfridge or when we go on one of our trips,” Kerschenheiter said.

Over the 127th Wing’s June’s drill weekend, the three servicemembers worked together as a single unit, uploading software to the aircraft’s central computing module. With Guetschow reading instructions from a technical manual, her two fellow sergeants sat in the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats of the aircraft, performing the upload.

“I think it is the camaraderie really that keeps you coming back,” Guetschow said. “You come out here and you get to serve with a great group of people.”

• Date Taken: 06.25.2017
• Date Posted: 10.15.2017 16:10
• Story ID: 251775
• Location: SELFRIDGE AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, MI, US