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CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan -- Keeping an aging aircraft flight ready presents its fair share of challenges for the crew chiefs - so much that having the maintenance specialists on hand has become crucial to performing routine maintenance in a deployed environment.
"It's all about teamwork," said Tech. Sgt. Wes Lercher, 76th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Unit crew chief. "Having all these extra sets of eyes on the plane really helps us stay on top of our game."
The compound, tucked away in a nook just off the airfield and only yards away from King ramp, centrally houses all the back shops that would normally be spaced out on a stateside base.
"We have people from every maintenance back shop out here from sheet metal to electrical to fuels to AGE," said Senior Airman Ricky Lambert, 76th EAMU crew chief. "We might not have all the parts we need out here but we definitely have a lot of knowledge."
This principal location is an asset to the maintenance crew because they easily built a bond. This bond helps synch all the different specialties when it's time to catch or launch and aircraft or perform maintenance on either plane.
"The specialists give us a good support system because we rely on each other for more than just their primary job set," Lambert said. "This is the best possible set up for us out here. We all live, work and play together all in the same space; so, when we need to work together, we already have that unit cohesion."
The specialists are all dealing with similar challenges: fixing and maintaining the aircraft with only the most basic tools available.
"We only have basic tools to do our job out here," said Senior Airman Joe LaFaille, 76th EAMU aircraft structural maintenance. "We have all this high tech equipment back at Davis-Montham [AFB, N.M.]; so when we got here and I saw what I would have to work with in order to get the job done, I was a little shocked. We have only the most basic tools available and in order to fix something, we had to use old school methods."
Another challenge the specialists face is the necessity to be proficient in all aspects of their job at all times. The maintenance crew here is lean. As such, the specialists are called upon to do a multiple of tasked in a limited amount of time.
"I am responsible for all the same things you would find in the back shop at home but out here, I am responsible for it all," said Senior Airman Latoya Williams, 76th EAMU electrician and environmentals specialist. "Usually you have different sections you can rely on to take care of certain problems but there's no one out here to hand it off to. So, you find ways to manage it all."
In an environment where personnel is limited and parts and tools are scarce, embracing the team concept has helped surmount any challenge the maintainers here face.
"We haven't had a whole lot of issues that we couldn't overcome," Lambert said. "We can't slow down or look back or the mission will fail so we have to keep up and we're making it happen. That's probably the thing I am most proud of: we're not letting anything defeat us. We're figuring it out and making it work - in many cases because the specialists are all chipping in."
| Date Taken: | 06.08.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.08.2011 04:27 |
| Story ID: | 71743 |
| Location: | CAMP BASTION, AF |
| Web Views: | 146 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, MXS specialists serve multiple roles on Fever aircraft, by SMSgt Stacia Zachary, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
