Photo By Senior Airman Kasie Faddis | Members of the 117th Air Refueling Wing's Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) Shop, part...... read more read more
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This month’s Unit Spotlight is the Non-Destructive Inspection shop (NDI), a section of the 117th Maintenance Squadron!
NDI is tucked away within the 117th and not many people actually know what they do. The shop only consists of five individuals with two full-time individuals and three drill-status guardsmen, which is normal across the Air Force.
The two full-time NDI Technicians are Staff Sgt. Jason Hawkins, a member of the 117th Air Refueling Wing (ARW) and Staff Sgt. Blake Pilarski, a member of the 99th Air Refueling Squadron (ARS), and they have both been part of the NDI shop for six years.
“We are in practice, preventative maintenance. So, at the end of the day when we go out and look for possible defects, we are also extending the service life of certain components,” said Pilarski. “Without our career field, after about 60 flight hours, a component just gets replaced with a new one or changed out, now we go out every 40 flight hours to verify it is still serviceable. Back in the day, without us, [it] would have been 60 flight hours, replaced and moved on, but now they can extend vastly beyond that depending on the component.”
“We can look at parts or the aircraft without having to destruct the aircraft or the parts,” Hawkins said. “So, we can take a part that they think might have a defect and figure out if it has said defect.”
NDI is a primary career field for the Air Force and their technical training is done at Naval Air Station, Pensacola because the Navy’s NDI is also trained there. Hawkins stated that over the course of 10 weeks they only cover the basic theories and principles of the job that can be applied to any airframe. Once they get to their duty station, they apply those fundamentals to their specific airframe.
“You will learn how to do some tasks, but most everything learned for NDI is done over the course of our on-the-job training (OJT),” said Hawkins.
When they get to their home unit or first duty station, they are trained on taking x-rays of different parts, blacklight inspections with fluorescent liquids and several other ways to inspect components. These inspections increase the longevity of components and provide a better understanding of things that could prevent our aircraft from being at their best. They may work in the dark a lot of the time, but with the tools they have and training they have been through they can see things most people would just look over.
“As far as maintenance jobs, I wouldn’t want to do another job now that I’ve done NDI,” said Hawkins. “It’s the best kept secret of Maintenance, without a doubt.”
| Date Taken: | 03.15.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 05.05.2024 16:28 |
| Story ID: | 469579 |
| Location: | BIRMINGHAM, AL, US |
| Web Views: | 250 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Unit Spotlight - Non-Destructive Inspection Shop, by SrA Kasie Faddis, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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