Connecting the world one wire at a time

Courtesy Photo | Staff Sgt. Lee Doolen, 407th Expeditionary Communications Squadron's Base Information Infrastructure shop, connects jumper cables to telephone circuits in the main distribution frame. Sergeant Doolen is deployed here from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.  

ALI BASE, IRAQ

05.05.2006

Courtesy Story

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ALI BASE, Iraq -- They are responsible for miles and miles of cable and wire just so everyone can communicate here and to the world. The job has them working above and below ground, fighting all the elements of working in a desert climate.

This responsibility lies with the 407th Expeditionary Communications Squadron's Base Information Infrastructure shop at Ali Base.

Being responsible for all telephones and wiring, copper cable, fiber optic cable and local area network cabling for the Air Force portion of Ali Base means this nine-person shop says busy.

The shop is a mix of telephone maintenance, cable maintenance, computer network switching cryptographic maintenance and computer communication technicians.

Having different job specialties is good but also meant more work at the beginning of their rotation.

"A lot of our workcenter are not doing the job they were trained to do," said Tech. Sgt. Dan Dvorak, NCO in charge of the 407th ECS BII shop. "We had to do a lot of training right off the bat to get things running smoothly."

The BII shop has had to tackle several major projects this rotation.

One of the on-going projects is moving the main distribution frame which services all Ali Base telephone, local area network and special circuits from one building to a tactical shelter. The new shelter is a dust free environment and should improve the life of the fiber and copper cables.

"This entails moving 350 strands of fiber and 3,500 pair of copper cables," Sergeant Dvorak said, who is deployed here from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. "This (moving the main distribution frame) has never been done before and is a major undertaking for our workcenter."

This might not seem like that much to many people since they are only dealing with a few thousand wires, but that is definitely not the case.

"It took us 11 days with five people to move the 350 strands of fiber," Sergeant Dvorak said. "The copper is going on right now. It (took) three days for four people to splice 500 pair of copper. The 3,500 pair of copper has to be spliced twice to install the section of cable we need to reach the new manholes."

To splice it requires a person to place 25 different colored wires from 'side A" into color-coded slots on a 710 splice machine. The splice machine trims the end of the wire on one side. Then an additional 25 wires from 'side B" are put on the other side, spliced and then merged together with "Side A." This tedious task takes a long time. All of this work is done in humid and mostly water-filled manholes.

"The hardest thing I have done here would have to be all the cable splicing we've had to do here," said Staff Sgt. David Reyes, who is deployed here from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. "Just splicing 600 cable pairs together has been very tedious and time consuming that by the end of (each) day I am completely drained mentally and physically."

One of the limiting factors they have had to overcome was the shape of manholes. Many of them were collapsed so all of the wiring had to be moved to new manholes. Others were just crowded with cables.

"Manhole number one was a mess with cables everywhere," said Staff Sgt. Lee Doolen, who is also deployed here from Tinker AFB. "So now we are routing wires to the tactical shelter through our two new manholes. Once we get all the wires routed the right way, we can start using manhole one again.

Another undertaking they have done is move telephone and network connections for a half dozen offices from one building to another. This entailed moving approximately 70 telephones and 100 secure and unsecure network connections.

During all of the moving of wires and cables, they have met some major challenges along the way.

One of the challenges was when 72 strands of fiber and 250 pair of copper was accidentally cut near the passenger terminal. The cabling serviced more than six offices. This required the entire office to work a full day to splice all the cable and return services to the area, Sergeant Dvorak said.

For many of the members of the BII shop this deployment has been harder here than at their homestation but very rewarding.

"I think that the job is harder here. Being from the 3rd Combat Communications Group (at Tinker AFB), we train constantly to initially set up our communications equipment," said Senior Airman Melissa Curry. "So for me being fairly new at the whole thing, and working at the 3rd CCG so long, I haven't gotten to experience the fixed comm part of the job that we do here.

"I've learned so much by coming here, such as the art of pulling cable, fusion splicing fiber optic cable together, how the telephone network operates on a base wide scale, etc."

• Date Taken: 05.05.2006
• Date Posted: 05.05.2006 07:51
• Story ID: 6289
• Location: ALI BASE, IQ