|
Posted on 01/28/2005 10:31:35 PM PST by snippy_about_it
|
|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
|
 LADS by Jonathan Given {Excerpt:} The Laundry Advanced System (LADS) is well on its way to replacing the Army’s current field laundry on a basis of one-LADS to four-M85s. So far, LADS has been fielded to the 259th Quarter-master Company, Fort Bragg, NC; 157th Quartermaster Company, Fort Hood, TX; 16th Quartermaster Company, Fort Lee, VA; and the 229th Quartermaster Company, Fort Polk, LA. Also, the US Army Quartermaster Center and School at Fort Lee, VA, and the US Army Ordnance Center and School at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, have received LADS and training devices to support their missions.  The LADS has performed extremely well. In addition to deployments within the continental United States to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA, and the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA, nine LADS recently were deployed to Jordan and Egypt as part of Exercise Bright Star. Also, eight LADS currently are deployed to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Southwest Asia. The increased reliability of the LADS combined with its increased efficiency have provided some notable results. The former M85 laundry system processed about 30 tons of laundry in six months during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. The LADS processed about 130 tons of laundry in less than three months during Exercise Bright Star in Egypt alone. To date, 24 LADS have been fielded out of a total of 146 to be built. There will be fieldings of the new M871A3, a 40-foot semitrailer, and all LADS will be "retrofitted" to this configuration. Benefits of configuring the LADS on the M871A3 include on-board fuel storage, fuel/water separator and quick-connect fuel fitting, and a storage locker for equipment and spare parts. Capabilities The LADS processes up to 400 pounds of laundry per hour, dry-to-dry. Soldiers’ clothes are washed, extracted and dried all in the same laundry drum. This system eliminates the need to transfer clothes between different pieces of laundry equipment. The LADS reuses and recycles water to reduce the water consumption from 24,000 gallons per day to 400 gallons per day. The wastewater is reduced from 20,000 gallons per day to 40 gallons. Lessons From the Field  Soldiers frequently complain about wrinkled clothing from the LADS. Some wrinkling is unavoidable. The laundry is processed in mesh bags to minimize lost clothing and to expedite the processing of soldiers’ laundry. Industrial laundries use mesh bags and acknowledge the decrease in product quality as an acceptable exchange for decreased processing times and reduced labor costs. Wrinkling can be kept to a minimum by removing the laundry from the bags immediately after it is finished instead of leaving the laundry in the mesh bags for hours. Supervisors need to properly manage laundry-processing personnel. Use available personnel to receive and bag the bulk of the available laundry before starting the LADS. As each laundry cycle is completed in the LADS, have personnel available to take the laundry out of the bags and prepare the laundry for return to customers. It is important to note that supervisors and preventive medicine personnel should observe the mesh bags for overstuffing. The bags provided with LADS are specifically designed to allow the clothing room to move inside the bag. The maximum for each mesh bag is about seven pounds of clothing (three pieces of uniform and three complete sets of undergarments). Each customer’s clothing should be split into two bags for the 15 pounds of laundry allowed. Each mesh bag has a cloth tag for writing an alphanumeric identification with indelible marker.  The identification tag on the mesh bag is used to match the customers’ clothing back to the customers. If the mesh bags are overloaded, the clothes will not get clean, they will not dry, and they will get very wrinkled. Supervisors and preventive medicine personnel should be very concerned about this. Aside from the health and laundry quality issues, the increased weight of one or more overstuffed mesh bags will generate drum-balancing problems during extraction cycles. The failure to spend time properly filling the mesh bags will ultimately cause delays in the laundry cycles. Each LADS is issued with 300 mesh bags (100 each of green, white and blue). That quantity sup-ports five complete loads (dual-drum loads) for more than five hours of operation. Operators should be able to process the cleaned clothing and return the used mesh bags to the laundry receiving point in that time. The multiple colors provide the flexibility of combining different units’ laundry in the same laundry drum. The different units are identified by the different colors.  There have been some complaints of clothing shrinkage. In all investigated cases, it was discovered that a few articles of clothing were processed in a single drum for the complete laundry cycle (40 minutes of dry time) at a very high heat (up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit). Smaller loads require reduced drying temperatures to avoid shrinkage. Drying temperatures can be modified at the beginning of each laundry cycle (160 degrees F to 110 degrees F in 5-degree increments). The default drying temperature is 160 degrees F. This is adequate for a full load of laundry of correctly filled mesh bags.      |
LOL. You're momma don't live here!
Good morning Mayor.
:-(
Hi Snippy !
We'll make it up after the thaw ...
Soldiers frequently complain about wrinkled clothing from the LADS.
I heard the most frequent complaint came from the Officers about starch in their underwear . . . or maybe that was just a figure of speech. ;^)
And I gt to work Sunday as well, such a deal!!! At least I will be off next weekend (I hope)
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
After decades of tyranny, Iraqi expatriates have already begun to elect leaders to draft a new constitution. In the photo below, seventy-year-old exile Mehsin Imgoter weeps after casting his vote at a polling place in Southgate, Michigan. Imgoter explained to a reporter that he was crying because his son, who was killed during the 1990-91 Shiite uprising, was not able to vote with him.
Reminded me of a story told to me by a WWII vet in the pacific:
The GI's showered in an open tent and all the local women would come by and laugh at them. The GI's would get so made they would throw their soap at the women which is what the women were after. One poor women was hit on the head and injured and that brought a stop to it.
Howdy ma'am.
That's what I was thinking when the weather guy said we'd have this stuff for the next 3 days.
Yum! That is what we had for breakfast.
Now, it is pretty common knowledge that spider-boy is a picky eater. He won't eat anything sticky, gooey, messy, or non-beige in color.
He really likes pancakes. Today... I put butter and syrup on ALL of the pancakes before he got to them. He picked one up, ate it, and says, "Hey, what did you put on this that tastes so good?" LOL, it was the syrup!
At lunchtime, we were at a birthday party at Planet Pizza. I pulled him aside and gave him "the lecture" about trying the food and being polite. He asked me what it was going to taste like. I told him it would taste like cheese. So he took two bites. He tried pizza for the FIRST time ever, and said it was good.
WooHoo! We have made some mega progrees in the food department today. First syrup on pancakes, then pizza. Tomorrow, maybe a hamburger???
I demand photographic proof of these alleged incidents! ;-)
Thank you, Sam.
BTW, I love, and can relate to, your tag line. :-)
Having helped a friend with his parents' dry-cleaning business during college, commercial extractors are impressive machinery.
Two of these machines running simultaneously would be some serious percussion--an unbalanced condition could imitate a Kennedy floor speech.
Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker, (1968, now in IV Edition) indicated the importance of clean socks.
The complaints of wrinkling were addressed above with instructions to a) not overload (can't be overemphasized), and b) remove promptly (again, simply common sense).
Laundry is, we all agree, important to morale, and as Iris7 notes, health.
The proper handling of laundering delicates is in the special basket provided by the manufacturer, remove from machine promptly, stretch over al Zarqawi's head, and continue copying the Geneva Convention on large expanses of skin with a Wellertm soldering iron.
A well-laundered army is better equipped to break things and kill people, and that's as it should be.
As for the "public schools"--in my elementary days, a man from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge would show patriotic films of America's history, and the Pledge of Alegiance began every school day.
My mother during her thirty-year career teaching raged, raged against the dying of this light.
My sister, after only twenty or so years of teaching, simply went to a Catholic academy to teach, finding the standards, discipline, principles and desire to learn classic.
We may safely do a traffic controller action on all robots of the NEA, dismantle the current system, begin again anew using the first names drawn from any phone directory by blindfolded primates.
Example: the highest per-student expenditures still produce illiterates unable to name the country America fought in the War of Independence.
In lieu of a draft, school administrators shall be conscripted, lashed up in bundles of ten with duct tape, and dropped on enemy combatants until the latter holler, "Uncle."
:-)
Sam says they were still starching his clothes in Vietnam but I wonder if that was a figure of speech. LOL.
Goodness, watch out for the food nazis! Imagine, enticing your child to eat syrup, pizza and hamburgers! ;-)
You're welcome. We try to tell it all.
How did the party go?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
