Photo By Senior Airman Erick Requadt | Aerospace ground equipment (AGE) Airmen from the 23d Maintenance Squadron share a...... read more read more
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When people think of aircraft, they usually think of pilots, followed by the maintainers who fix them. People rarely consider the Airmen who service the equipment that makes it all possible.
The maintenance professionals of Moody’s aerospace ground equipment (AGE) are responsible for inspecting and repairing equipment needed to support Moody’s flying mission.
“AGE’s round-the-clock support is instrumental in keeping the 74th Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU) maintainers actively employed toward producing safe and reliable aircraft for our operators,” said 1st Lt. Noland Johnsen, 74th AMU assistant officer in charge. “There’s a saying in AGE, ‘there’s no airpower without ground power’, and without the shop’s efforts and upkeep of their large and diverse equipment inventory our aircraft would be stuck on the ground.”
AGE maintains the equipment needed to repair the three airframes in the 23d Wing. To accomplish this, AGE is broken down into three main functions: inspections, maintenance and dispatch.
“Inspections are like a revolving door, every month (we have) equipment we know is coming due,” said Tech. Sgt. Benjamin Chandler, 23d MXS AGE NCO in charge of inspections. “With maintenance, though, we never know what to expect. It could be something super simple or everything might break at one time.”
Where the inspection and maintenance sections keep the equipment running, the dispatch section supports the movement of approximately 500 pieces of equipment, from hydraulic-test stands to generators and from axel jacks to air conditioners. AGE accumulates more than 1,300 hours of dispatches per month.
“The (dispatchers) deliver equipment. They’ll take it out there, drop equipment off and pick it up,” said Senior Master Sgt. Jesse Wiseman, 23d MXS AGE shop chief. “They also do any quick fixes. For instance, we’ll get calls for dropped voltage on a generator on the flightline, so our dispatchers will go up there and they'll do quick checks to make sure it's maintenanced.”
If there’s an issue the dispatchers can't fix readily, then they’ll bring it to the shop where they’ll hand it off to the maintenance section who'll start troubleshooting and repair the equipment. The maintenance section averages approximately 800 jobs a month.
“Maintenance takes anything that the dispatch cannot fixed right away,” Wiseman said. “They're the ones that get into the weeds and seeds to fix these types of equipment and then order whatever parts are required, repairing everything they get.”
Although the maintenance section ensures restorative maintenance, Wiseman emphasized that the preventative maintenance efforts of the inspections section allow the longevity of the equipment to be sustained.
“They're doing preventive maintenance to make sure the fleet is healthy and continues to operate as it should without components breaking,” Wiseman said. “Our inspections are on an annual basis. It's important that on that year-mark the inspectors target the equipment, and (complete a) thorough inspection to make sure it's maintained. Preventive maintenance is done by checking all the key areas before sending the equipment back out, because if we never did that, it would come in broken all the time.”
Wiseman illustrated how each section within AGE is vital to each other, that without the other, their support to the base would come to a halt, hindering the mission as a whole.
“Without the preventative maintenance of equipment through periodic inspections, the equipment would be more prone to break, creating an unmanageable workload for the repair section,” Wiseman said. “No serviceable equipment means no assets for dispatch to support the flightline. Lastly, if there was not a dispatch section, then AGE would never get delivered to the flightline and aircraft would not launch to meet mission requirements.”
When AGE is firing on all cylinders, maintenance professionals like Johnsen, who had previously served in AGE for 14 years, are able to recognize the integral part AGE plays in giving them the tools they need to take the fight to the enemy.
“We can’t launch an A-10 until it’s been topped off from a servicing cart, nor can we fix a discrepancy on landing without auxiliary equipment on-hand to complete technical order procedures,” Johnsen said. “We can’t take the fight to the enemy until munitions and pods have been loaded with a jammer.”
Whether it’s dispatch, inspection or maintenance, AGE ensures airpower has the necessary ground power.
| Date Taken: | 06.28.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 06.28.2019 17:20 |
| Story ID: | 329719 |
| Location: | MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 40 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, AGE maintains airpower through ground power, by SrA Erick Requadt, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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