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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:One of my favorite maintainer stories is the night a bunch of Marine Air Wing mechanics raided our parts room.
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Jan 4, 2016 08:24
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Psion posted:I think iyaayas cried when I posted some mission-readiness percentages during Desert Storm. I was just quoting a book, man! Gulf War Air Power Survey Vol III p346 says: quote:Because the Core Automated Maintenance System (CAMS) was never They seem to have decided to knock 6% off the figures to account for the apparent inflation. Even before that, the GWAPS figure for the F-16 FMC rate is never above 92% for any given month. Here is a big table:   There's probably 10-20 more pages in this section, if you really care you should probably read it since I didn't and I might have missed important details. One other thing it mentions is that readiness was better than expected for a deployment because plans for deployment didn't include cannibalizing all the planes back home for spares  Skimming to find the end of the section, I noticed that right after it there's an appendix with a list of damaged aircraft (not every one, just whatever was found in some particular file): quote:A-10 79-0182 23 Jan 91 23TFW Damaged Left leading edge wing, 5-6 dime size punctures. 0.25 m/h (est) on AFTO 97 using speed tape Easy! quote:B-52G 58-0248 18 Jan 91 42BW Damaged 6' of tail, aft of 1853 bulkhead. Repair for 1 time flight to Guam; Repair est: about 12 hrs I guess that'd be that friendly fire incident.. yes, 58-0248 is IN HARM'S WAY  e: changed GWAPS to Gulf War Air Power Survey because that acronym is no longer unique on the Internet!
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Jan 4, 2016 09:46
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Krasniy Prospekt posted:Hi, I've been a long time reader of this thread. Just wanted to say that I recently decided I was going nowhere at my comfortable job and enrolled in a two year aviation maintenance program. I've always loved planes and working on things, so I thought this would be a great career to explore. I've heard a lot of good things from people who have been in it, and I know we've got some military guys in this thread, but just wondering if we have any civil people? What can I expect to be doing when I get out? I'm assuming work is probably more plentiful in commercial areas versus general aviation. I did the same 10 years ago. It will likely tie you to big cities with airline hubs or large operations, though there are opportunities at small airports for general work and depending on how ambitious you are. My 1st job was with Panasonic Avionics working on Inflight Entertainment Systems. Thankfully they hire new mechanics and required an A&P. We did contract work for major airlines to inspect and repair IFE systems both new and old. I had no luck for half a year looking for work with airline or general aviation maintenance places and thankfully came across that job unexpectedly and never heard it mentioned in school. The pay was much better than I expected for my 1st job, which was $20 p/h back in 2008. I also traveled a lot for both training and some unique jobs. Had I not left for my current job I would likely have branched into their engineer group which travels all over the world to test things and inspect new IFE systems on new aircraft. After 2 years I got a job offer from Delta for line maintenance work and would have jumped at it but I'd just gotten a great job at Boeing that my pilot and A&P certifications helped for. Boeing hires A&Ps in Renton/Seattle/Everett for line maintenance work, too, which can be a good starting point. One of my old Panasonic co-workers got hired at the same Boeing facility as me, so it's a small world in aviation. A friend from my A&P class works for an airplane painting company and does mechanic work for certain things (mostly fixing what the painters break). Ironically he does some similar things that I do for Boeing for the older planes that come to his facility to have new paint jobs like weighing, control surface balancing and weight and balance calcs. My 1st job offer was actually from a small flight school I looked in to to finish my commercial pilot license. The owner wanted someone to do the inspections and basic maintenance on the school planes. He didn't offer much for pay and said I'd be able to build time for free ferrying the planes around. I was excited, but realized it wasn't a good fit for me although it may have been a cool opportunity for someone else. Plus I didn't feel comfortable taking on a school's maintenance needs with 0 experience outside of school. I had someone offer to start a business with me training people how to build their home-kit planes. Basically you charge a few $1000 for a weekend or weeks worth time to show the basics of sheet metal work (drilling/countersinking/riveting/etc). It was whole different animal of things, though  . I wasn't financially ready to do so or move to where he was, too. But, there is work involved in that side of aviation, too.So, there's some unique and basic jobs out there depending on your location, willingness to move and end up networking with. I have some other posts about it in this and the ask/tell aviation thread, or feel free to ask if any questions. A lot of jobs might offer extended learning, too, to finish a bachelors degree. Panasonic and Boeing have for me. The work can get tedious and very repetitive. The conditions can be bad depending on the environment you work in. Politics, Unions, Airline ups and downs, seniority and all that can get annoying and screw up careers and leaves a lot of us jaded. But I've never had a job outside of aviation that didn't have similar stuff and I'd much rather work around and on airplanes. There's just something cool about being involved in aviation even with the drudgery it brings.
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Jan 4, 2016 10:00
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Are the numbers for SAC in that table represented as fractions? Or did the B-52s have a sub-1% readiness rate?
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Jan 4, 2016 10:34
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VKing posted:Are the numbers for SAC in that table represented as fractions? Or did the B-52s have a sub-1% readiness rate?  I hadn't noticed that. I can't see any discussion about problems with B-52s or Diego Garcia so I assume someone just forgot to click on that cell in Excel and format it as a percentage, i.e. it probably is a fraction.Also I just noticed another table which suggests to me that MC and FMC are two different metrics so maybe that's why the numbers I quoted are lower than the ones Psion posted. For the Navy, the MC rate was 2-3% higher than the FMC rate. Another interesting snippet: quote:The number of [maintenance] persons that should have been expected in
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Jan 4, 2016 10:55
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AzureSkys posted:I did the same 10 years ago. It will likely tie you to big cities with airline hubs or large operations, though there are opportunities at small airports for general work and depending on how ambitious you are. My 1st job was with Panasonic Avionics working on Inflight Entertainment Systems. Thankfully they hire new mechanics and required an A&P. We did contract work for major airlines to inspect and repair IFE systems both new and old. I had no luck for half a year looking for work with airline or general aviation maintenance places and thankfully came across that job unexpectedly and never heard it mentioned in school. The pay was much better than I expected for my 1st job, which was $20 p/h back in 2008. I also traveled a lot for both training and some unique jobs. Had I not left for my current job I would likely have branched into their engineer group which travels all over the world to test things and inspect new IFE systems on new aircraft. Just want to say this is a good post filled with good advice. Also, once you're in the industry, that's where you're going to find out who's hiring for what. By the time the ad has gone out on aviationjobsearch.com, they've been needing to fill that position for months or longer.
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Jan 4, 2016 13:26
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Buttcoin purse posted:
MC and FMC are different. Technically, an aircraft can be Mission Capable but not Fully Mission Capable. FMC meaning everything's good. I don't know if it's AF-wide or not, but we used FMC and PMC (Partially MC). And of course NMC (Non MC). A jet that's PMC might not work for certain missions depending on what's still broken. Example: an AWACS with a non-functional primary radar seems like a waste of space, but if it's a training mission over the US, it's not a big deal. You have to notify the fighters that you're IFF-only and will not be able to provide point-outs to non-squawking traffic, but that's all. Even over Afghanistan/Iraq/wherever, it might be worth having the datalink and radio communications extended by putting a blind E-3 up in the air and giving that much longer LOS and relay capability. If there's the potential for enemy aircraft in the area, that's a much less attractive option for obvious reasons, but the E-3 is still PMC even though it's broken in such a way that's not really mission capable. Godholio fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 17:03
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So it could mean that all of the B-52s had something on them that was broken, but they could still drop bombs on things?
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Jan 4, 2016 17:12
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VKing posted:So it could mean that all of the B-52s had something on them that was broken, but they could still drop bombs on things? Yeah. Similarly you'll see rolling stock degraded for things like a seat cushion being torn or a horn not working but it will sure as poo poo assume mission even if technically it is degraded.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:19
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I'd like to hear stories of the most brokedick aircraft people have personally seen fly out for a mission! edit: without breaking OPSEC, of course.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:35
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Fredrick posted:I'd like to hear stories of the most brokedick aircraft people have personally seen fly out for a mission! Most broken aircraft to fly out: those that catastrophically failed on takeoff
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Jan 4, 2016 17:40
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used wet paper towels to seal a crew entry door copious amounts of speed tape to patch up holes flying a jet with a tendency to compressor stall on a certain engine with "set your watch to it" regularity regularly doing AR with a known "boom killer" awacs (there's a few of those in the fleet) ops checking lovely pressurization controllers only to return back with a "yea it doesn't hold pressure" that's all I'm remembering right now.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:42
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This AWACS broke other planes' dicks. We were deployed, and at the time I think we were only supporting the war in Afghanistan (we flew to Iraq occasionally, but rarely). There was something wrong with the refueling boom receptacle, so every time it took gas from a KC-135 it wouldn't release the boom without what's called a "brute force disconnect," which is exactly what it sounds like. This had the added bonus of sometimes breaking something in the boom assembly on the tanker itself. We would typically refuel twice per mission, from different tankers. The tanker units did not like us, and the one supporting the first refueling typically called ahead to find out which jet we were using so their crew would know if they were coming home early or not. I can't remember if maintenance actually got it fixed or if it just rotated home and got fixed later. For relevance, I assume a KC-135 with a broken boom is NMC. One of the flight engineers drew four KC-135 silhouettes on the nose gear door. I wish I had a picture of that. Edit: V I remember there was a jet that seemed prone to compressor stalls (which are terrifying if you don't know what's happening) but I never remembered the tail. 0009 was an electrical deathtrap that had so many power spikes the lighting was like a loving rave, and 556 and 1407 (the original) were loving troopers that wanted to fly. Godholio fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 17:46
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0355 was the exact AWACS I was talking about. We had it up in Elmo while I was there.
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Jan 4, 2016 17:50
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The fact that you guys were flying a jet with a known brute force disconnect issue and requesting refueling anyway makes my blood boil.
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Jan 4, 2016 19:29
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World's premier C2 asset Edit: the oldest awacs were by far the best. I wanna say those were the ones procured from airline buys. Maybe standards dropped on military-sourced new builds?! Balls 7 is my favorite AWACS. She was my deployed jet. A very good E-3. bloops fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 19:34
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Yeah I'll go check my book again with those numbers to see what he was talking about but I'm pretty sure he meant MC and not FMC since he was discussing sortie generation. If you add that rate inflation plus the MC/FMC difference all those mid-90s become mid-80s which is still legit as all hell and will still make iyaayas cry inside. I mean that's the real goal here. Buttcoin purse posted:Gulf War Air Power Survey Vol III p346 says: This is some good poo poo though, thanks for pulling it up. Psion fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 20:13
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Dead Reckoning posted:The fact that you guys were flying a jet with a known brute force disconnect issue and requesting refueling anyway makes my blood boil. I wouldn't argue with the guys responsible for telling fighters what is and isn't friendly...
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Jan 4, 2016 21:56
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AzureSkys posted:I did the same 10 years ago. It will likely tie you to big cities with airline hubs or large operations, though there are opportunities at small airports for general work and depending on how ambitious you are. My 1st job was with Panasonic Avionics working on Inflight Entertainment Systems. Thankfully they hire new mechanics and required an A&P. We did contract work for major airlines to inspect and repair IFE systems both new and old. I had no luck for half a year looking for work with airline or general aviation maintenance places and thankfully came across that job unexpectedly and never heard it mentioned in school. The pay was much better than I expected for my 1st job, which was $20 p/h back in 2008. I also traveled a lot for both training and some unique jobs. Had I not left for my current job I would likely have branched into their engineer group which travels all over the world to test things and inspect new IFE systems on new aircraft. Well at least one person here isn't trying to kill my dreams. lol. I realize it's going to take time to move up and it's not going to be huge money, but I've been doing the same crappy thing for eight years because I've been afraid to leave. I feel that it will be interesting and challenging for me. If it doesn't work out, I can always try something else. As far as military, I've tried and was rejected for taking anti-depressants. Thanks for the input everyone.
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Jan 4, 2016 23:44
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Greataval posted:Most A&P work is poo poo work for poo poo wages when starting and if your not prior military or structures you can pretty much count out govt. work. When you work in St. Louis since boeing is shutting down the F-15 line the only bet is lovely regionals at like 13-15$ an hour. I know people who are working at Boeing here and they're expanding like crazy right now. I know the Saudis are still there, haven't heard anything about the Koreans. Congress also ordered some F-18s that will be built here. We have missile assembly here (air to air I think) and I've read we're getting part of the 777 wing soon. Might be 787, though.
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Jan 4, 2016 23:54
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Krasniy Prospekt posted:I know people who are working at Boeing here and they're expanding like crazy right now. I know the Saudis are still there, haven't heard anything about the Koreans. Congress also ordered some F-18s that will be built here. We have missile assembly here (air to air I think) and I've read we're getting part of the 777 wing soon. Might be 787, though. Then thats cool for the boeing stuff.Cool thing is for aircraft you don't need a A&P to do it hell most sheet metal guys will not have a A&P to do work and just have other people sign the work.
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Jan 5, 2016 00:14
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Dead Reckoning posted:The fact that you guys were flying a jet with a known brute force disconnect issue and requesting refueling anyway makes my blood boil. To avoid the OPSEC wizard losing his poo poo, I'll just say that in those days you could count all our deployed tails on one hand with fingers leftover and we were flying multiple lines per day. And the CAOC was not interested in changing that, even though they were aware of the situation. holocaust bloopers posted:
The first two (71-1407, 1408) were airline bodies that were purpose-built in the factory as E-3s. If you're up close, you can actually see the panel used to replace the line of windows down the side. The others don't have that. The fuselage change came after the USAF was committed. The JSTARS jets though...they're all third-hand or worse. Mostly purchased from freight companies. I used to have a powerpoint that had pictures of them all in their former lives. 1407 was without a doubt my favorite. 556 was next. 0009 was always the worst, which struck me as odd because that was the last USAF E-3 built (a 1983 model!). hobbesmaster posted:I wouldn't argue with the guys responsible for telling fighters what is and isn't friendly... The joke was that we'd just be a little late in giving the tanker the threat call since they could outrun us with those big engines. Like they say, you don't have to outrun the bear, just the guy next to you. Godholio fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 01:20
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Psion posted:This is some good poo poo though, thanks for pulling it up. Glad to have something to contribute for a change! My dream is to read all of the GWAPS (3000 pages?) eventually. Maybe I can post a few interesting snippets. One that comes to mind: does anyone know the story of how the Air Tasking Order was sent out to the aircraft carriers? There are too many steps involved for me to want to type it on my phone 
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Jan 5, 2016 01:56
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Fredrick posted:I'd like to hear stories of the most brokedick aircraft people have personally seen fly out for a mission! Overall I don't have anything too heinous from my own experience, but some of the highlights from the E-2: I did my initial air control training flights on a plane with broken radar and IFF that only worked every 2-3 sweeps. It was mostly guesswork, but it was a 2v1 so  . The jets were contract Lear jets that just follow a preset script, they barely even listen to what you're saying anyway. Was just about to start controlling some Hornets for a training sortie when we lost pressurization. "gently caress it, we'll do it with masks on" I say, just as the LOX bottle (emergency O2 system) decides to vent its entire contents. Had to go home after that. Flying back across the country from a det, with a plane that had developed a history of propeller pump issues (i.e. the system that controls propeller pitch, i.e. something you don't want to be cavalier with). The previous two or three flights ended with a low prop fluid caution, which necessitates shutting down the engine and making an immediate emergency landing. Maintenance takes a look at it and says "yeah, we keep having to fill it up with fluid, but the leak rate is within limits. It's good to go." The point is raised that it will take us some 12 hours to fly back, with two stops for fuel along the way, during which time we won't be able to service the engine. The point is duly considered and we're told to go anyway. Sure as poo poo, climbing out of our first fuel stop in Houston, prop pump light, shut down engine, emergency landing at Lackland AFB. Had a great stay at the Air Force Inn (way better than Navy Inn), and the plane was stuck there for about a week while a maintenance det worked on it. We were parked next to a T-38 that had suffered a birdstrike, had a shattered canopy and a silhouette of the back seat guy outlined in bird guts. We felt relatively fortunate in comparison.
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Jan 5, 2016 02:05
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1932 in air cargo:
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Jan 5, 2016 03:19
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Godholio posted:This AWACS broke other planes' dicks. You know, this reminds me of something I've always wondered about but forget to ask: How does a tanker boom connect and lock up to the receptacle anyway? Mechanical? Magnetic? Chewing gum? Same for the navy basket'n'probe. e: vvv neat; makes sense. Duke Chin fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 04:22
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Hydraulic clamps triggered by an electrical impulse. When the boom enters the receptacle, a circuit is completed thereby triggering two clamps.
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Jan 5, 2016 04:27
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:1932 in air cargo: To heck with the Ju-52, what happens to Victor Gaunt!?!
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Jan 5, 2016 04:27
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Watching HH-60's refuel is like high schoolers fumbling around in each other's pants in the dark at a party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7lSCcC7fUg
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Jan 5, 2016 05:04
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Finally - a good use for drones: http://i.imgur.com/TXtZJTa.gifv
Duke Chin fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 08:36
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Duke Chin posted:Finally - a good use for drones: http://i.imgur.com/TXtZJTa.gifv You say that as if peak drone hadn't already occured https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsZjmPtyxzU
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Jan 5, 2016 08:43
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Was just about to start controlling some Hornets for a training sortie when we lost pressurization. "gently caress it, we'll do it with masks on" I say, just as the LOX bottle (emergency O2 system) decides to vent its entire contents. Had to go home after that.... This reminds me of two incidents. One I wasn't on board for, and it ended up not being too serious, but we had an E-3 hit something like 11 birds on takeoff. Nothing so large as Canadian geese thank god, and they were all inboard of the engines so there was just some sheet metal damage, but as soon as we heard that radio call at the ops desk the stress level hit the ceiling. The LOX bottle reminded me of the one and only time I actually had to be the "runner" during an emergency. The runner's duty is basically to hand fresh O2 bottles to the firefighters/technicians as they do whatever it is they need to do, and hand the empties to one of the scope banks, manned by a "bottle refill team" (if it's the front row it's the controllers, if it's the back row it's the surveillance guys). They refill the bottles using O2 ports on the wall. We were returning from a trip to Peru where we "protected" the President for a few days (killer loving trip), out over the Pacific about an hour from land. Someone reported on the internal comm net that they smelled something strange near the back row, then someone else chimes in with "Smoke coming through the lower lobe hatch!" The rear lower lobe (under the main deck) is mostly radar hardware...everything is generated down there, the dome is just the transmitters/receivers. The lower lobes are cramped, awkward, and full of sharp metal corners. Smoke anywhere on a plane 100 miles from shore at 30,000 feet is bad. Smoke down there is really bad. We spent the next 40 minutes circling (WTF?!?) while the techs crawled through the lobe hunting for the source. We went through probably two or three dozen bottles. I completely drained mine twice because I wasn't paying attention (THAT wakes you the hell up). They ended up never finding the problem and the smoke/fumes dissipated so we left everything powered down and flew the rest of the 6 hours or whatever to get home. The bottle refill team is also what they call it when the shitter is full/broken on a long mission and the males have to piss in their water/gatorade/whatever bottles. Edit: Oh, there was the time we didn't have nosewheel steering (after declaring emergency for uncooperative landing gear) but didn't find that out until after landing as we slowed down to the point the rudder wasn't helping. That was only a couple of weeks after the structural failure that caused a nosegear collapse (fortunately the rain helped prevent a fire like the one after the nosegear collapse at Nellis a couple of years earlier). That was one of my final 5 flights, all of which ended with in flight emergencies. Godholio fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 09:03
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Thank you for the stories, everyone!Enourmo posted:You say that as if peak drone hadn't already occured AEROFALLOSOV !  For content's sake, here's a few naval aviation shots:    
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Jan 5, 2016 09:05
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Fredrick posted:For content's sake, here's a few naval aviation shots: That Wildcat should have had a black livery too.
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Jan 5, 2016 10:21
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Godholio posted:That was one of my final 5 flights, all of which ended with in flight emergencies. That sounds like a pretty bad rate! So at the start of those 5 flights, were the planes fully mission capable?
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Jan 5, 2016 11:55
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Godholio posted:That was one of my final 5 flights, all of which ended with in flight emergencies. Two days from retirement....
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Jan 5, 2016 14:43
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Buttcoin purse posted:That sounds like a pretty bad rate! So at the start of those 5 flights, were the planes fully mission capable? Probably not...FMC was pretty rare at home station at the time. Years of the O&M budget being cut by 10% annually had taken its toll and the only way to get "problem" jets fixed was to deploy them and let CENTCOM pay for parts. That's how the electrical nightmare 83-0009 was sent downrange, but someone up the chain of command threw the penalty flag when they saw the maintenance expenditures the first month it was there so they sent it home (in similar condition) right away. I think 4 of the 5 were for engine shutdowns, the other was that landing gear. I think they all happened late in the flight so no big deal. Best thing about an IFE is it gets you out of doing two hours of low approaches and touch-and-goes at the end.
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Jan 5, 2016 16:33
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Buttcoin purse posted:Glad to have something to contribute for a change! My dream is to read all of the GWAPS (3000 pages?) eventually. Maybe I can post a few interesting snippets. Assuming you mean Desert Storm still, I believe it was something along the lines of "print out a phonebook size ATO every loving day and chopper it out" but this is the US military - I'm sure the actual process was 34 times as complicated.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:48
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Just spotted a pair of GEnxs heading Boeingwards on flatbed trucks. Thought they usually air-haul those exclusively?
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Jan 5, 2016 19:13
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HookedOnChthonics posted:Just spotted a pair of GEnxs heading Boeingwards on flatbed trucks. Thought they usually air-haul those exclusively? There are significant trucking operations that literally ONLY haul jet engines. A LOT of engines move by truck.
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Jan 5, 2016 20:33
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