SOUTHWEST ASIA -- The base's operations tempo is only as fast as its people can communicate what needs to be done to keep the mission flowing. One organization here is responsible for making sure the equipment used to complete the mission is always in working order.
The 379th Expeditionary Communications Squadron's ground radio maintenance shop here provides the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and tenant units with efficient equipment necessary to complete the mission.
"Our job is to provide communications capabilities to people on the installation and in our airspace," said Staff Sgt. Travis Meyer, 379th ECS NCO in charge of ground radio maintenance. "We are responsible for installing and maintaining air-to-ground radios, land mobile radios, the pager system, the giant-voice system and all cell phones for the base."
The seven-person shop is responsible for approximately 4,200 pieces of equipment including 2,000 LMRs, 1,600 cell phones, 600 pagers in addition to larger equipment like air-ground radios and the giant-voice system. The shop is also responsible for the public-address system setups.
"There isn't a single person on this base who we don't affect," the Sheboygan, Wis., native said. "Our equipment is used by everyone on base from the wing commander all the way down to an Airman First Class who's trying to do his job as a force-protection member. Our equipment makes it possible for planes to fly, security forces to protect the base and emergency services to respond."
On a day-to-day basis, Airmen in the shop typically help 15 to 20 walk-in customers who have issues with LMRs, cell phones or pagers, and also perform approximately five maintenance inspections.
"Our preventative maintenance is basically us ensuring a piece of equipment isn't going to fail any time soon," Sergeant Meyer said. "It could be anything from a simple cleaning to an in-depth alignment of a radio."
For LMRs, the biggest customers ground radio maintenance has are security forces and maintainers.
"For security forces members, LMRs are the most efficient way to relay information to other personnel in their squadron." said Airman 1st Class Lauren Persico, 379th ECS ground radio maintainer, who's deployed from Kadena Air Base, Japan. "For maintenance workers out on the flight line, the radios facilitate a means to coordinate with other shops for repairs."
In order to maintain secure LMR communications, encryption keys are used to digitally scramble a signal and are changed on a regular basis.
"When we perform a re-key, each person in our shop is assigned a unit on base and must individually rekey each radio that day," Airman Persico, a Sarasota, Fla., native said. "If you're using a radio with an old key to talk to someone who's radio has a new key, the audio will be distorted and completely unrecognizable."
With the exception of re-key day, the majority of the shop's maintenance work comes from the base's giant voice system. He said the majority of the shop goes out on a regular basis to make sure giant-voice speaker stacks are working properly.
"It can take anywhere from hours to days to fix an issue with the giant-voice system," Sergeant Meyer said. "Right now we've had pretty good luck with it, we found 11 stacks that weren't working properly and we fixed them all in about four hours or less."
Most of the maintenance work done on the giant voice is replacing the batteries which power the stacks.
"Since the batteries keep getting charged and recharged they go bad some times," said Sergeant Meyer. It can be hard to change them out because we have to go up on a six-foot high concrete block which has very little walking space, and you're essentially moving car batteries around trying to not shock yourself.
"This is a challenging job that keeps us busy all the time, but that makes the time fly by for us," said Sergeant Myers. "It also helps that I have a great crew. All my guys have been [working hard] since the day they got here. It definitely makes the job a little easier when everyone in the shop is willing to work hard."