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No Comm, No Bomb: Cable dawgs wire base for war

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Nathanael Callon
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Regardless of the mission, every organization on base relies on one common factor--communication.

The 379th Expeditionary Communications Squadron Cable Maintenance shop is responsible for ensuring that necessity is intact and functioning properly.

"We work on everything," said Staff Sgt. Carla Schempp, who is a cable maintenance technician and native of Asheboro, N.C. "We are trained to lay down all types of cable--copper, optical fiber, and local area network cables."

Schempp and Airman 1st Class Baron Drinks, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., recently completed an installation of a fiber-optic and a copper communications system, linking two buildings to the base network.

"This is a big deal for the guys who work in these buildings," said Schempp, who is deployed from Scott Air Force Base, Ill. "If there's no communications capability, it makes accomplishing their mission that much more difficult."

Fiber-optic communication systems have a higher data capacity than traditional copper systems and can be used across greater distances to connect systems.

"Fiber also considered more cost-effective because it only requires two strands to run multiply lines, but copper takes two pairs to run one line," said Schempp.

Optical fibers are very delicate though, so the technicians have to be very careful when installing it.

"The optical fiber is basically a very small strand of glass," said Drinks.

One fiber is about 125 microns in diameter, or roughly the size of a human hair. This means there is a lot of precision and delicate handling involved, Drinks explained.

In addition to the fiber-optic and copper systems, the cable maintenance flight is also responsible for running new telephone and local area network lines.

"Our job takes us everywhere," said Drinks, who has been in the career field for two years.

Every day is something different, and that's what makes the job exciting, Drinks continued.

"The best part of our job is how versatile it is," he said. "Some days we are working with customers, and other days we're laying down cable from one side of the base to another."