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380AEW Article

Airmen troubleshoot AGE in tough conditions

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jacob Morgan
  • 380th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA --  Imagine the wear and tear on the engine of a car that drives for twelve hours straight, takes a short break, and continues for another twelve. It's 110 degrees outside for half of the day and sand gets into every crevice of the car. Engine oil turns into sludge, the radiator gets filled with sand, the clutch gets burned and all of this causes other parts to break. These conditions are similar to the conditions most of the aerospace ground equipment goes through with the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Responsible for more than 100 different types of equipment, AGE technicians must have extensive knowledge of electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, engine and cooling systems to troubleshoot the equipment. The shop is responsible for knowing technical orders for each system. If printed on paper, they could have a library the size of a tractor-trailer to maintain the information they must be familiar with.

"We have a lot of specialized equipment out here that requires specialized knowledge," said U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Kyle Anderson, 380th Expeditionary Maintenance Squadron AGE craftsman. "When equipment comes to our section from the flightline, we get the basic information, but then we have to find the problem and fix it. Sometimes, one piece of equipment has more than five different technical orders."

Some of the equipment the AGE technicians work on have multiple systems fail. For example, a cooling system breaking can have second or third order effects on an engine or electrical system.

In a day, one AGE technician could be working on three to four different pieces of equipment. According to Anderson, troubleshooting can be fun and exhausting at the same time.

"Most of the equipment here runs all of the time," said Anderson, who calls Crystal Lake, Ill., home and is deployed from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. "When a piece of equipment goes down, we have the experienced members work on it and teach the younger more inexperienced guys how to fix it."

Anderson, one of the members who has gone from the role of learning to teaching, said he still faces many different challenges due to the time constraints of getting equipment out.

If an aircraft lands after a 10-hour mission, its systems are already stressed. The maintenance units on the flightline use aerospace ground equipment to power and keep everything cool during the hot days here. Without the ground equipment, aircraft maintenance would be fighting to keep up with devastating heat inside the plane, which could cause systems to malfunction.

"My hardest day was probably when three separate air conditioning units for an aircraft went out," said Anderson. "Each one of them had a different problem, one with an oil leak, one with clutch issues, and one with hose problems. We try to turn these around in two hours, but troubleshooting can take hours when feeling your way through multiple systems. It's like a puzzle."

Typically, repairing three large air conditioning units would be a full day for an AGE technician, but add five more pieces of equipment coming into the section for repairs and the shop becomes very busy. However, the AGE section persevered; they finished eight two-to-four hour jobs in just under 12 hours.

According to U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Mark Naglack, 380th EMXS AGE flight chief, Anderson, who is one of the more experienced staff sergeants in the section, is heavily relied upon.

"We rely on our young NCOs for everything here," said Naglack, who calls Salt Lake City, Utah, home and is deployed from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. "Staff sergeants run the show, they are the ones making sure the equipment is properly prioritized, maintained and signed off to return to service."

The goal of the AGE section is to fix equipment as fast and reliably as possible to prevent any problems for an aircraft sortie, said Naglack. Learning from each other is part of the process to troubleshooting equipment and getting it back operational.

"This has been a learning experience for me, I have met a lot of new people and had the chance to work on a lot of different equipment. I get to learn from each situation," said Anderson. "It is interesting seeing the capability of our aircraft and the part we play in it. We may be a few steps away from saving lives, but the people we support do. We are all out here for the same purpose essentially; we just accomplish it in different ways."