Our Military at work...Dumb stuff you did or Broke serving our country

[Cyclone03]

Good Stuff Guys.
I'll change the title to "In Service to Your Country" if that will get some of our not US Bangshifters in here.

I still work for the USAF so I'm still "in service" I guess.

In the Dumb catagory this came up about 5 years ago and got the "factory" involved.
The USAF T6 I work on is a Turbo Prop. It has a turbine engine that drives the propeller through air pressure off the back of the engine. The "shafts" are not conected air drives the prop,like a torque converter in an auto trans. Because of this the engine can run and the prop not turn if it is being held by something like the propeller covers on bungys,or hand(!). The Factory got involved because somehow they sort of "own" the planes engeering wise so they get to answer all the dumb questions. What happened was a pilot failed to do a proper walk around preflight and didn't remove the prop covers and started the engine. Had it running and up to speed and the prop was not turning! Shut it down then the fun started,what do we do now? Did we hurt it? What happened? Basicly nobody could say one way or another because who runs the engine with the prop held? It ends up Pratt and Witney does and it's ok,everything is pressure lubed and fine. They then let us know they do a torque test prior to shipment of the engines by restaining the prop shaft. No big deal.
Then the bomb shell, a video of a P&W guy HOLDING a prop with the engine screeming! Just dont let go it spools up right now!

[BangShift McT]

That's unnerving, Cyclone. "Hold that prop, Airman!" ..."I'll get riiiiight on that, Sir..."

Speaking of the USAF, one of my better stories...

Balad, Iraq, November 2005. I'm standing on the 3' wide platform on top of a Kiowa working on the Mast Mounted Sight System. It's the thing on an OH-58 that looks like somebody spray-painted Kenny from South Park in olive drab paint. We are at one end of the airstrip, the normal take-off starting point. Except that there is an F-16 stuck in the mud two feet off of the runway (I can't make that up.) It's later in the afternoon and I'm close to wrapping up when my assistant Gonzo notices a C-17 at the far end of the main runway. I look up in time to hear the engines spool for takeoff.

The -17 gets a good run and we're expecting what we've always seen: straight and low until they clear the perimeter fence, then a combat climb. It's very impressive to watch. However, once he catches air, he starts turning toward ME. He's maybe 20-30' AGL, hauling ass at full spool.

Aww, c'mon...

He clears me by feet...next thing I remember I'm on the ground (a 11' fall) next to our truck. According to Gonzo I was sucked off the top of the Kiowa and thrown a few feet. Once I remembered what planet I was on I apparently full retard, screaming that I was gonna get the HMMWV and head over to the USAF office and Flight Ops and bury my foot up someone's ass. My 1SG from that time period had a great picture of me standing on the roof of a LMTV truck in the sunset, with both my middle fingers up, screaming like a banshee.

History repeated itself a couple of years later...had a bomb blast from a Hellfire missile finding a truck-bomb plant send a shockwave that was strong enough to toss me and do some damage all around the field. More screaming ensued.

[Cyclone03]

That's unnerving, Cyclone. "Hold that prop, Airman!" ..."I'll get riiiiight on that, Sir..."

.

Thats not something done or required for anything we do,P&W was just trying to tell the AF it's not something you need to call us on if it happens.

Had a Navy friend blown off the back of that "what is this" 4 seat A6 looking thing form a few threads back. The proplem was he was on top of it while it was sitting on the deck of an air craft carrier. He hit the edge of the saftey cable with his back on the way to the water about 100 away. He "bobbed" once and a SEAL was there! It cost him about half a pay check buying those guys a round or 5.....

[Caveman Tony]

Back in ohhh... 2002ish... we had 'wow look at this' HIGH-tech new repair manuals on CDs (WHOA!!)... No more wasted time hunting around for the right book to show you how to do a job you already know how to do... just click, and read..

And these new-fangled CDs were loaded up on these super-cool high-tech things called LAPTOPS... They were these supposedly 'indestructable' Panasonic 'ToughBooks'... like $6000 apiece...

That is, until someone drops a wrench 20 freaking feet off the top of the C-17 wing onto the laptop screen.

"Uh, Captain, am I gonna hafta pay for that?"

[BangShift McT]

Those things sucked out loud. We kept a full set of paper manuals until our S2 shop got a hair up their ass and made the LTC order us to use the laptops. Looking at an aircraft electrical schematic on a laptop screen is worse than Death By PowerPoint.

[Thumpin455]

Anyone still subject to the UCMJ? Is anything an admission of guilt? =P

Stupid stuff I did? Uh, you might lose your lunch if you have eaten recently if I told you about stoipid on me. Part of my job was servicing lavatories on cargo and pax planes. If you want to hear about the nightmares involving blue water and turds in our pockets, I will share.

I have LOTS of stories about other people doing stupid stuff, if you dont mind reading I will post some. Almost all include MHE and aircraft or power lines.

Then there are the dry ice bombs... Maloxx bottle, filled with crushed up dry ice, just a little bit. Pour in hot water, tighten lid, and get rid of it. Used to send them sailing form the Inflight Kitchen (where the dry ice was kept) into the Fleet Service office where there was a bench usually holding someone. They slide real well and quite silently across tile flooring.. then BOOM. We tried it with a 5 gallon Igloo cooler, the tops would just let the pressure out, but one gallon milk jugs made the SP's come looking around.

[JOES66FURY]

came into work at 12am, turn over stated to change #2 engine and number #3 prop. Looking from the back of the aircraft #1 engine/prop would be on your far left. Anyway, I was by myself, what kind of douche gives me turnover to change a engine and a prop by myself...screw it I will show them...I will do it and be done with it before the next shift comes in. Back track slightly, this was about 9 months into the shift, my wife was working all day and I was home from 7am to about 9pm by myself with 2 toddlers and a 9yr old. I rarely got any sleep. Well, this day was a bad one, I got zero minutes of good sleep, unless you take into consideration the nap I took at a red light. Horns woke me up. So I get into work pissed off at the world and proceed to change an engine and a prop..again...by myself (a min of 2 is required) I did it, finished up everything and knocked out all my paperwork. Then I looked at our turnover log book...and realized that it did not say to change #2 engine and #3 prop, it did in fact say....change #3 engine and #2 prop.....I lost a lot of ass that day, much of it chewed off by my boss, and the rest chewed off by his boss.

[Fordplay0621]

I used to work on CWO keith Turks Helicopters, Never did anything wrong. : ). But I did see a lot of alternative maintenance practices and some questionable sheetmetal adjustments, and a few burned up components. I work as an instructor and saw alot of soldiers making thing work, not a pretty site.

[Cyclone03]

OH Boy Lap Top T.O.s !@#$%^&*() the only people who think they are a good idea are TODO's, just a push of the button and 1000's of TO's are updated,no "A" paging,sup installs,paper assholes....done a great idea . Those of us who use them identify the problems and short comings,a list of over 300 items just in our unit of 450 personel. Then said list was dropped in the shreader and more laptops ordered. We somehow managed to save our Wire Diagrams,thank god.
We have completed tasks that take 30-45min before a "cold" laptop is turned on,logged on,program loaded,TO chapter loaded,TO page and para located and ready to go.ON our series they loaded the whole TO in Adobe as one Volume with only chapters seperated.So when you get to the chapter you have to go through page by page to get where you want to go. If you happen to know the page number you can jump to it,but if not it's a guess and go.
They jammed those POS's up our tails 45 dats before our last ORI,took away ALL paper,including WD's. Most raised holy hell,I decided to kill them with thier own bullet. I went 100% electronic I wanted to prove it was the wroung way. I practiced,wanted to give it the best I could. I got to the point ,except for WD's,I could get by with it. I told the boss I wanted as many over the shoulder task evals the inspectors could give one person. I got one. A task that with a paper TO ,with Task Eval, would take about an hour . Prep,tools,consumables,TO forms,CAMS. By just adding the operation of the laptop,removing the paper TO the Task Time on my eval was an hour and 45 minutes. I used the LapTop for TO and CAMS,the inspectors did make the note that the electronic TO and WiFi slowed the task measurably.

I could have used paper TO's because our management brought them back ONE WEEK before the ORI because they were worried about the lost time during Task Evals,that and only about 10% of us even tried to work around them.

All the paper is gone now,except WD's,engine run,towing ,fuel and inspection checklist's.

We joke about how well the electronic TO's would work if we printed the pages then somehow bound them all together into some kind of book and called it a .............Tech Order. LOL

[Cyclone03]

I say go ahead and tell stories on your co workers,I do.LOL

[JOES66FURY]

OH Boy Lap Top T.O.s !@#$%^&*() .

We joke about how well the electronic TO's would work if we printed the pages then somehow bound them all together into some kind of book and called it a .............Tech Order. LOL

No need to say anymore after the first statement. I dont mind the lap top PDF documents, they are easy enough but now the have this IMIS bull shit, I would like to kick the living crap out of the douchebags at boeing that came up with this assinine program. I am talking full on rage, it does nothing but slow maintenace down.

We were told to delete our paper library. I said no, I am not doing it..they said you have no choice. I said what happens when IMIS crashes, they said you still have Spider...I said what if both crash? They said it wont happen...guess who was right....THIS GUY! Not a week after I was told to shred my library both systems crashed. I got a call asking if I deleted my paper library.... I said Oh yeah, we shreded everything, all the papers are gone. there was a long pause, followed by an oh shit....I laughed...no, I am not that stupid.

[BangShift McT]

Eh, there's worse things. My second deployment, about a third of the way through, we got about six new pilots in. I distinctly remember one time, two of them dropped down on the maintenance pad screaming something about the sight wasn't working, and to get our asses out there and fix it NOW.

I walked out, noticed no response from the MMS, but a lot of noise from the pilots. I looked at the circuit breakers, both MMS breakers were pulled out. I pushed them in, fired up the sight, and slapped the closest helmet.

At least the pilots got it. Stupidity should be painful...that evening a case of my favorite Haji drink, a kind of banana smoothie, found it's way to my doorstep.