Mission accomplished for Airmen on project team

Air Force Links ^ | Staff Sgt. Stacy Fowler

[SandRat]

8/17/2006 - KIRKUK AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) -- A project team working on Iraqi Air Force Comp Air 7SLX aircraft have completed their mission in record time -- doing a complete overhaul of four aircraft in 41 days instead of the planned 130.

The aircraft, designed to be unarmed, is used to patrol oil pipelines and other infrastructure targeted by insurgents. Several of the aircraft were presented to the Iraqi Air Force by the United Arab Emirates in 2004. A crash in May 2005 which killed one Iraqi and four Airmen prompted the Iraqi government to ask for help in flight-testing the aircraft. That's when the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., entered the picture.

The project began in February when the team at Edwards AFB stripped down the first aircraft, learned everything they could while repairing it, and rebuilt it.

Following several major modifications to the aircraft, including installing a new set of wings, a new engine and propeller and installing a prototype air conditioning system, the team spent a month flight testing the aircraft to determine its flying qualities. The team then removed the wings from the aircraft and packed it and their parts, tools and equipment in a C-17 Globemaster III for a deployment to Iraq in June to work on four more aircraft.

The Comp Air 7SLX, or CA7, project team, comprised 16 members from Edwards AFB; Robins AFB, Ga.; Hill AFB, Utah; and Tinker AFB, Okla. They spent almost one and a half months preparing, stripping down, rebuilding and testing the four aircraft here.

"Because of this team's ability to think outside the box when confronted with something they've never seen before, combined with their great technical ability and drive, we were able to beat the standard by 89 days," said Chief Master Sgt. Bill Ludwig, the CA7 team's maintenance supervisor.

"These guys are some of the best in the Air Force," the chief said. "They never said die and never said quit."

The advance team arrived June 9, and prepared each aircraft for complete restructuring by stripping everything: skin, mechanics, wires, anything that wasn't part of the airframe itself.

"We completely gutted these aircraft when we first got here," said Tech. Sgt. Jamie Brown, CA7 crew chief. "We made skeletons of four aircraft in four days so that when the rest of the team got here we could get straight to work and build new aircraft from the ground up."

But there were some challenges no one on the team could predict until they began getting elbow-deep, sometimes literally, into their work.

"We had never seen this airframe before when they first brought it to Edwards," Sergeant Brown said. "We had no tech data to work off of. We learned how to build the other four by building the first one in the states. But even then we had to become jack of all trades to get the mission done. Everyone became a crew chief, from making controls for the cockpit to working sheet metal for the firewall between the engine and the pilot."

The first challenge: no continuity in most of the parts, wires and problems between the aircraft themselves.

"This team discovered things that were unique to each aircraft," said Lt. Col. Michael Pelletier, CA7 team leader. "If we found something on one aircraft, we wouldn't find it on any of the others. These weren't 'boiler plate' scenarios, because each aircraft was different. You'd have the same parts, but they would be in different places on each aircraft."

Besides rebuilding four aircraft from scratch, the team here had to deal with other challenges as well, such as the desert heat and being on the end of a long logistics trail for parts and equipment. But the team overcame the first hurdle by working at night while it was cooler, and worked around the second hurdle through advanced planning and ingenuity.

"Out here, once it gets past 100 degrees, it's just another kind of hot; we had to go to night shifts most of the time so we could get a lot more work done," said Tech. Sgt. Bobby Saenz, CA7 electrician. "We'd still be pretty warm at night, but we could still get a lot of our tasks done without worrying about people dropping from the heat."

Another issue the team had to deal with was the occasional rocket and mortar attack.

"Those certainly made life interesting," said Staff Sgt. Eric Nanni, CA7 air conditioning technician. "We were in the middle of working one night when we got attacked, so we all had to drop everything and grab our protective gear."

Then there were even more challenges such as trying to conduct test flights in a combat environment, planning details of the test flights, and a tricky matter of trying to fix parts with a fiberglass resin that would dry within five to 10 minutes in the heat, even at 2 a.m.

But these challenges did not deter the team as they slashed their assignment time and were able to return to their home bases.

[SandRat]

PHOTO ALBUM

[Chode]

looks like an Otter...

[ASOC]

No wonder no two were alike - they are kits.

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