Thursday, March 09, 2006
i'm going to miss air force school! the 5 days that i spent at aeti was an unforgettable experience. i learned so much more about aircraft maintanence, including the systems of the skyhawk. for this, i have my supervisor, this warrant officer, to thank for. his knowledge on the skyhawk's systems is beyond words. every single detail is at his fingertips. he probably would see the piper warriors' systems as an insult to his intelligence. i guess it's these type of crew chiefs that keeps the planes up and flying. respect to all of them. my WO's extreme patience and dedication in teaching us has led to my friends and i increasing our knowledge on aircraft maintenance such as safety and techniques that are necessary in servicing a bird. working in the warm and humid hangar is certainly something not many people get to experience, and i'm grateful that i was given the chance to feel what it's like working in there. well what my friends and i actually did was to remove the tail fairing for the horizontal stabilator stuck at maximum trim(11 degrees) for rectification. all the work was done while standing on the horizontal stabilator. it was kinda scary at first cause i thought i might fall but i got used to it quickly; you just had to watch your step and know who's around you. hours of arduous hard work and bucket loads of sweat was put in. being a tech wasn't easy. the screws were giving us a bitch of a time cause the head of the screws were shearing off and the WO taught us how to remove the screws using the extraction method.
the best part of the 4 days was, i got to lock myself in the cockpit for a few minutes everyday and imagine myself flying the aircraft. the skyhawk's cockpit is extremely small. the number of switches and functions just put me in awe. how i wish to be in control of such an aircraft in the future, doing what i love most as well as defending my country. oh how could i forget. i even got to try on the helmet and the oxygen mask!!! my friend said i looked like an elephant cause of the 'hose'. but it was totally cool. i felt like an astronaut. hopefully one day i'll have my own helmet with this written on it: MUD. (can i put a playboy sticker on it?). after every hard day's work, my WO would buy us drinks and he'll talk to us about his experience as a crew chief as well as aviation stories from all over the world from an airshow in america to the israeli 6-day war. today however we talked alot about ejection. for a moment i nearly typed erection. anyway for the record he used to keep the black knights' skyhawks flying. =)
i'm gonna miss the time i had at AFS. hope to be there again, hopefully as a trainee pilot of course. maybe my WO would be the crew chief of my aircraft and if that's the case, i'll have the utmost confidence in him that my aircraft will be airworthy and performing to it's maximum ability each time i fly it. oh well a picture of my friends and i with our WO standing in front of the skyhawk would be very nice. unfortunately, no camera phones or what more cameras are allowed in the AFS. whatever it is the memories that i had there shall always be in my mind. =)
towards technical achievement* AETI( Air Engineering Training Institute)
p.s. attachment certainly beats classroom lessons.
-mud
the retards: ETD 21:58