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If the aircrew refuses the plane for something that's within limits to me, it's their option, but it's also a late or an abort against OPS, not MX.

And therein lies the problem. Quit chasing metrics. The rewrite of the MX regs in '99 to include all these mandatory metrics has driven a wedge between ops and mx.

The books are different for a reason. What may be acceptable to generate an aircraft if you're looking for generation numbers isn't acceptable for certain operational reasons. Are there grey areas that cover both edges of the differences in the books? Yep and those are reserved for true operational necessity, not a local pilot pro - and the crews know the difference.

We really need to work together instead of against each other, but so long as MX leadership is driven by metrics instead of mission effectiveness, we're in a losing battle.

*donning flame retardant suit*

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Anytime there is a discrepancy in tolerances it creates a catch 22 between ops and mx. When this situation occurs the only way to resolve it to get a decision from SPO engineering.

I don't know how or where -1 limits orginate and don't understand how the identical limit shows up in the -1 with a different tolerance than the -2. I do, however, have intimate knowledge of how -2 limits are determined. Without going into a lot of detail the process is lengthly and detailed, involving the system design engineer, other engineering disciplines, much analysis and testing. Based on the foregoing my position in these situations was the -2 always prevailed. I would explain this to the FE/AC. If they disagreed the next step was to call crew transport and turn the problem over to the maintenance superintendent. And as Lkuest calls it, Ops Cx.

Later when I was assigned to the Hq TAC 130 shop and this issue surfaced the chief FE and I would send a joint message to WR-ALC explaining the problem and asking them to fix it.

I've been out a very long time but am sure maintenance's objectives have not changed. That is provide the aircrew a safe clean ready to fly bird!!!

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And therein lies the problem. Quit chasing metrics. The rewrite of the MX regs in '99 to include all these mandatory metrics has driven a wedge between ops and mx.

The books are different for a reason. What may be acceptable to generate an aircraft if you're looking for generation numbers isn't acceptable for certain operational reasons. Are there grey areas that cover both edges of the differences in the books? Yep and those are reserved for true operational necessity, not a local pilot pro - and the crews know the difference.

We really need to work together instead of against each other, but so long as MX leadership is driven by metrics instead of mission effectiveness, we're in a losing battle.

*donning flame retardant suit*

A couple of points. What is it you refer to with "metrics"??? I think I know, but would like to hear from you. Second: what is infered by "driven by metrics instead of mission effectivness"? I know nothing about the rewrite of the MX regs in 1999, however, I can assure you that the objective of every ground crew maint. type (engine, prop, sheet metal, etc.), and every single crew chief I ever knew was the safety of the aircraft and the safe return of the crew that flew her. One thing the crew chief dreaded the most was an aborted mission at the end of the runway due to mechanical failure.........

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Chris,

I couldn't have said it better. Although I crosstrained from crew chief to FE back in 1974, when I was a crew chief, first & foremost was to turn over a safe and clean airplane to the flight crew -- and that's what I expected as an FE.

I don't think I've ever chased a mandatory metric, though.

Don R.

Edited by DC10FE
spelling, of course!
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The biggest problem I run into is when I show up to an airplane I haven't flown in weeks and there's a leak somewhere. The crew chief tells me, "Oh yeah, it's within limits." Who checked it? When was it checked? Where is it leaking from? How do I know it hasn't gotten worse? If I land off station I don't know how much fluid to expect coming out of it. I don't know if there's an easy answer but I'd rather call engine/hydro/whoever and have them re-explain it to me instead of taking chances on third person information. I think it's the same as an inop fuel gauge. The crew chief tells me it's already been dipped and verified but I'm going to do it again personally. Not because I think they're idiots but because I'm the one who will be in that airplane when it runs out of gas because someone assumed someone else checked it. And that is also why I might refuse to fly an airplane that has an "acceptable" leak.

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It's in the 1C-130H-2-61JG-10-1, S/S/SN 61-10-21, para 6 for Propeller leakage inspection. The pump housing as a whole is allowed to leak 1 drop/45 seconds either operating or statically. This does not include the propeller shaft seal, and nothing else on the prop is allowed to leak. If I get called out to an airplane for a lip seal leak, I'm going to use the maintenance book for the limit. If the aircrew refuses the plane for something that's within limits to me, it's their option, but it's also a late or an abort against OPS, not MX.

I can understand all that. Without having your books to go by, I had to do a refresher in my HS books. This is what I found:

Visually check valve housing cover to pump housing sealing area and drain plug area for hydraulic oil leakage. Install new seals if leakage is evident in these areas. Clean the valve housing cover breather with dry cleaning solvent (Item 2, Table III). Visually check the front and rear of the control for leakage. The front and rear rotating pump housing seals operate with a film of oil between the sealing surface and the rotating parts, therefore, a film of oil in the seal area is acceptable. However, oil seepage that causes oil to drip from the front or rear of the control in excess of one drop every 45 seconds (4 ounces per 24 hours) is cause for control removal and seal replacement.

Seems to me that I can have 1 drop from the front and one drop from the rear at the same time! Where is my lawyer when I need him?

Going back in my memory banks - which is a risky proposition anyway - I remember a time when lip seals were not allowed to leak while running, but they could when static. I probably should quit tryint to remember stuff from that far back.

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A couple of points. What is it you refer to with "metrics"??? I think I know, but would like to hear from you. Second: what is infered by "driven by metrics instead of mission effectivness"? I know nothing about the rewrite of the MX regs in 1999,

MX is graded on metrics by HQ. On time takeoff, mission effectiveness, etc. These are entered during debrief. They are briefed to OG/CC daily. What has changed is the coding. There is a lot of leeway to put certain things into certain categories and many chase the briefing slides so they look good. For example, if a crew goes to a spare, they'll get charged an "ops add" and it looks good for MX in the slides (scheduled generation: 3, actual generation: 4) and then they want a 2407 to request the "ops add". It's a ludicrous paper and briefing game that changed in '99. The challenge is not the guys on the line - they still kick a$$ and work to get safe planes for the crews - it's the upper management. When I'm ETICing and I get asked what percentage I'm going to give them if they'll give me the plane, that's the wrong response. Or I get told that they can't generate the plane unless they get at least 51% so it's an "effective" mission. Or we get into the sliding ETIC game hoping that ops will CNX so they can mark it up that way. Again, it's not the guys on the line, it's the management - and certainly not all of them. It seemed to be cyclical - every 6-9 months it'd hit us again. About the time HQ beats up on the MXS for their stats...

And for ops' part, there were crews who would write up every little niggly thing to get back at MX. That's BS too. I watched FEs argue over whether or not the oil pressure gauge was really reading zero with everything shut off. I'm all for having a black letter plane, but really, I'd rather just go fly. If it isn't healthy, it'll let me know.

It gets into a vicious circle. That's why I said to quit worrying about metrics and focus on mission effectiveness. MX works on sorties and ops works on missions - ops doesn't care how many planes it takes to get a mission done, but MX does. It's the wrong focus. This is why I think it'd be better if production & CC were back under ops - we didn't have these sorts of ridiculous conflicts then.

however, I can assure you that the objective of every ground crew maint. type (engine, prop, sheet metal, etc.), and every single crew chief I ever knew was the safety of the aircraft and the safe return of the crew that flew her. One thing the crew chief dreaded the most was an aborted mission at the end of the runway due to mechanical failure.........

No argument here. The guys on the line have pretty much always worked their tails off. And always understand when there's a safety issue.

To the post that sparked my original response - when there are discrepancies between the -1 & the -2, it's my belief they are there for a reason. It's this grey area that delineates broke and hard-broke...it gives you wiggle room when you need it. Flagpole training missions ain't it. And to tell ops that "it's in my book that way, so if you don't take it it's ops CNX" is a BS attitude. I'm not for making MX do unnecessary work, but there are wide tolerances on many things and narrow tolerances on others. Props and bleed air are things to be picky about. Personally, I never worried too much about prop leaks, but other folks are more conservative than I am and lump that in with "known prop malfunctions" - which is a bit offside, but it's their pink butt.

As a long-time FCF guy, if I had a real heart ache with something, I'd talk to the DO and do an OCF on the thing. Or do some FCF "training" for a new guy. If it doesn't pass the -6 checklist, it gets written up. Fortunately, this was extremely rare. We could usually talk to the pro-sup and get it sorted. Another favorite with a repeat/recur was to invite MX to fly the mission...funny how that changed some minds too, depending on the writeup. Again, rare.

The challenge is the concept that MX is getting graded on their briefing slides every morning. I can't tell you how many OG/CC I watched during morning stand-up "wave off" the "whose fault is it" slides. I saw at least two different OG/CC tell the MX OIC he didn't want to see those anymore, only to be informed they were required to be briefed...

Too much thought goes into the nit picking. If we were all focused on generating missions instead of sortie counts, it'd be better. Again, it's not the line guys' fault at all, but currently the objective isn't quite the same because ops & mx are graded on different things, and that's wrong.

I'm reminded of the old quote, "It's amazing how much can be accomplished if nobody cares who gets the credit."

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My bad for bringing up maintenance stats. My intention was more or less to show that if you want to play games with maintenance, we can play them too. We hate chasing stats, probably more than everyone else on account of how much overtime we work to make the stats prettier. One can only work so many 12's before a prop with a bit of a runny nose that our book says is good seems like a petty thing to gripe about. Again, you have the option to have us check servicing every time it flies, but if the aircrew dictate maintenance, then they can answer for it to someone with more rank than the guy turning the wrench. It's a game, but one we're willing to play.

I had a flight engineer refuse to take a plane for no LSGI operation on a single engine. Nevermind you don't use it in flight, nevermind that system is on the flyable list, and nevermind an entire group of experienced 7-levels says it's ok, he still stuck to his guns and refused to fly. He mentioned something about not knowing if the fuel governor was working. Since when is LSGI an authorized ops check for the fuel governor? My answer was, even if the engine does LSGI, you won't know if the fuel governor is operating correctly unless you ops check it correctly. I even offered. I told him, we are going to change the LSGI button, the engine will ops check good, and you will take an ops late for refusing a flyable write-up. That's exactly what happened, and I made sure the pro super would annotate it as an ops late. When he came out to fly the plane, he had a bunch of fuel control schematics out to prove his point, but he failed to get ours. We know how the engine works. We don't need a flight engineer with x-weeks of engine schooling to tell us how the engine works when we have a collective 50+ years of engine maintenance experience at our disposal. I don't care when a flight engineer says he has 3000 flight hours of experience because I worked 3000 flight hours worth of engine malfunctions every 3 months, 8 years straight. I'm not too good with numbers, but I rekkin that engine experience is pretty high. Don't tell me how to fix my airplane and I won't ask my pro super to chase stats. We are never short on real work trying to get the rest of the fleet flyable again before the sun goes down or having to take a second lunch. Most of my time has been to support around-the-flagpole flying, so don't anybody think I'm being unreasonable in expecting aircrew to take a serviceable aircraft when our book says it is. I understand mission necessity, I just wish certain FE's I met did too.

MFE, because aircrew need heroes too.

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There was only one time that I actually refused an airplane and informed the IP as to why. We were on an evening 5 hour pro with and IP and 2 students, a student engineer, an instructor up grade FE, and myself. Fuel was 7-6-5 as usual for PPs. FE switched to aux tanks on climb out heading to Blythville. Fuel was balanced between tanks and fuel flows were even. LM called up and said that #3 had fluid running down the side of nacelle. I looked at the quantities, oil was fine, but RH aux was down 500 lbs and #3 fuel flow had dropped off a few hundred pounds. I went back and looked and the entire side of the nacelle has fluid running from the side panel. I scampered back up got on intercom and told the IP to shut down #3 because it looked like we have a big fuel leak on the engine. Shut down and headed back.

I explained the problem and gave it to maintenance. So we sat and sat. Maintenance gave us the plane back with a CND. I headed to the flight deck and the condition level was in ground stop but the T-handle was still pulled. Maint kept saying it was good and I told them that it wasn't because that fluid have to come from somewhere. I told that IP, Major Kitchens, that it wasn't safe to fly until they did more troubleshooting. He refused the aircraft and we cancelled.

The next day we got called on the carpet by the squadron CC. Even though he was rated he was nothing more than a paper shuffler looking for his chicken. We tried to explain the situation to him but he wouldn't listen.

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Went on a pro flight for a jerk wing weenie that akways seemed to get stuck with, sucked as a pilot, worse as a oersin, anyway we were bashin' holes in the runway at Richmond, why I don't know,, started rainin' so we climbed up and circled waited 'til to see if it quit. I saw fluid comin' out the drainmast on 3, called it up, FE comes back, and says that wasn't good, went back up, told the pilot, and ne says it was just "water from the rain we had flown through." This went back and forth, but he would not change his mind, rain cleared we crashed and dashed some more and the fluid leak came and went...........Believe me I was keepin' my eye on THIS and keep tellin them this. Finally this pinhead gets quota, and say we are headin' back to langley. the FE is stillr aggin' on him, so finally somewhere around Wliiamsburg, he decides to shut it down. The FE says he is gonna write him up for a safety of flight violation. Don't know what happended after that, I can't recall the FE's name, I do remember he wasn't from 36th though.

I flew with this idiot yoke yanker another time, front of the bus people smelled smoke in the cockpit . I didn't initially but when I did it was definitely electrical....You maintenance and FE folks know these systems far beyond anything I know, but this happened....all the radios went out, can't remember what else, he goes buzzin' the Langley tower in a radio-out maneuver, beats through the pattern, when he landed I swear he drove the main gear through the wing root. Stops on the runway, the fire guys are there, they T-handled the engines because, if I remember right, they wouldn't shut down normally. When I opend the troop door to throw the chocks out, one of the crash guys grabbed my ass and next thing I know I was on the grass. I remember the bitchin' that he hadn't followed proper emergency procedures that time either. I believe he just wanted to kill ME!!!!!!!!!

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I explained the problem and gave it to maintenance. So we sat and sat. Maintenance gave us the plane back with a CND. I headed to the flight deck and the condition level was in ground stop but the T-handle was still pulled. Maint kept saying it was good and I told them that it wasn't because that fluid have to come from somewhere. I told that IP, Major Kitchens, that it wasn't safe to fly until they did more troubleshooting. He refused the aircraft and we cancelled.

I think this was pretty shameful. We have tech data that specifically tells us how to leak check the power package for fuel problems. I think training might have a lot to do with this. I would be embarrassed if this were to happen where I work. I think the quality of the truck driver has a lot to do with this too. If there was a fuel leak write-up, and nothing was obvious, I would at least have my guys motor it, then run it for good measure. Some people think JP-8 won't catch fire if it leaks in the QEC, but I've seen minor fire damage before on a leaky fuel nozzle manifold, so I know it can happen.

Maybe they SHOULD require maintainers to fly with you guys on a CNDs, both as a means of troubleshooting as well as an integrity check.

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One thing is obvious: for 3 and one half years in the USAF I had it "made in the shade". Most of these acronyms you guy's are throwing around I never heard. To tell ya the truth, I never had a flight crew turn down a plane. The years that I was a Herky Healer the US was crankin' up for war, and like I said in an earlier post, we were sent all over hell and back with only a toolbox and the cloths on our back and told to "keep 'em in the air". We did. I'd have liked to see the look on the face of the line chief when some of those planes returned to CCK. And those guy's did a hell of a job too. Sgt. Middleton sent many a bird back with maxed out hours and the very same plane was back in Nam 10 days later. The really great thing about those days was the super high espre de corps. That ended when most of us rotated back to the arm pit called Langley. I'll never understand why a squadron commander would take a bunch of hardened crew chiefs off the flight line and put them in exile.

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Many years ago in my AGS an aircrew member declined an otherwise airworthy acft. After discussing the issue with his sqd. commander, whom I knew, in due time this crew dawg returned to the acft. and without utteriing a word we launched him with no difficulty. The crew chief was kind of freaked out. I told him it was because his commander ripped out his tongue.

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I think this was pretty shameful. We have tech data that specifically tells us how to leak check the power package for fuel problems. I think training might have a lot to do with this. I would be embarrassed if this were to happen where I work. I think the quality of the truck driver has a lot to do with this too. If there was a fuel leak write-up, and nothing was obvious, I would at least have my guys motor it, then run it for good measure. Some people think JP-8 won't catch fire if it leaks in the QEC, but I've seen minor fire damage before on a leaky fuel nozzle manifold, so I know it can happen.

Maybe they SHOULD require maintainers to fly with you guys on a CNDs, both as a means of troubleshooting as well as an integrity check.

I couldn't agree more Lkuest. The manner in which maintenance handled this situation is at best incompetent, at worst criminal. One has to ask why the production super. allowed this to transpire as it did. Absolutley no excuse for the manner in which the descripancy was cleared. Incompetence such as this sure damages maintenances' credibility. Would hope supervision provided, "advice and guidance," of the brown shoe persuasion.

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I had a flight engineer refuse to take a plane for no LSGI operation on a single engine.

Would it not go to LSGI or did the button not stay down? Those are two different animals for ops. If the button won't stay down, I can fly it as long as it low-speeds when I hold it down. If the engine won't go into low-speed at all, we don't fly it because overspeed protection might not be there & we don't know for sure w/o changing parts.

I don't care when a flight engineer says he has 3000 flight hours of experience because I worked 3000 flight hours worth of engine malfunctions every 3 months, 8 years straight. I'm not too good with numbers, but I rekkin that engine experience is pretty high.

Experience counts though. Engine runs are always on the ground. Not telling you yours doesn't count, just that it's different. Let me tell you a different story and I'll come back to this.

I was on a SQ trip with a couple planes. Swapped planes one day and noticed the rudder was a little stiff on the right side, but torque makes you push on the right side harder, so I went with it for the moment... I flew the first portion of the sortie, and asked MX to look at it. I didn't like it and I don't write stuff up just to show you how much I know - I want to fly. I told them if they didn't find anything, I'd take it for the second lift of jumpers and check it out again. On takeoff roll, I asked the other pilot to feel it and see what he thought - he agreed it was stiff, but wasn't sure if it was bad or not - I took the plane back, finished the takeoff, dropped the jumpers, and then went out and did some rudder air work. I brought it back. The pro-super told me he'd checked the rigging and the hydro and it was all good. I apologized to him, told him I wasn't trying to make him do extra work, but could he check again because it just wasn't right & maybe it was the lack of air load that he couldn't duplicate that was masking the problem. 17yrs and 5K+ hours at that point and it just didn't feel right to me...even though other guys didn't write it up prior to this (the plane had been flying all week with the other crew, which included a guy with more experience than me). Next day, we came in to find the rudder off - all of the rudder hinge bearings were bad.

Experience counts.

And that works both ways. It counts on MX side as well, but I respectfully beg to differ that your 3000hrs worth of write-ups is the same as 3000hrs flying behind those engines. Those two comparative numbers mean different things - sometimes, yours is far more valuable and other times, the FE's will be. It depends on what we're talking about and what the writeup is. Circling all the way back to the LSGI button story (told you I'd come back), your experience is more valuable because you know that 99.9 times, it's going to be the solenoid and not the actual fuel control, but the FE can't go by that if it won't go into LSGI (if he doesn't take just the button holding, he's being a bit of a girl) and we get into an us-v-them and not understanding why the books are different again...your interpretation is always going to be ops is making MX do work they don't need to and our interpretation is always that MX doesn't want to fix the planes because their books are different and give them an 'out'.

Regardless, by the time we're to the my crank is bigger than yours game and throwing years and hours around, we've already lost...

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I understand exactly what you are saying about overspeed protection and LSGI, but we have an ops check that not only tells you that you have overspeed protection, but at what exact RPM it kicks in at. It was determined that the Air Force was buying LSGI buttons that were failing prematurely because the manufacturer didn't meet the specs, and the button failure was a commonly known problem at the time. This was button down, stays down, no low speed. I offered him an opportunity to salvage all of his flying events by doing the actual ops check and a resync, but he chose to be late instead. Ever after that, I saw him as an FE that didn't want to fly, and every time he hit the flightline, he lived up to that impression. We started parking in front of his airplane anticipating having to work something stupid, and were proven right time and again. If we could've tail swapped his crews over to a J, we would have.

My point was, if we are forced to look at something minor, even when we say it's good, and it turns out as good as we say it is, we'll make sure the numbers reflect that. I don't like chasing numbers, but if that's all I got to use, then I'll use it. If you refuse to fly an ugly airplane, but it is serviceable, of course we'll look at it anyway, but it's on you. If you refuse to fly an ugly airplane, and it's actually bad, good on you, and keep doing what you are doing. I got a few aircrew hero stories myself, one involving a rudder boost pack that broke off it's mounts, but the maintenance hero stories are my favorite. Must be bias.

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There is never a shortage of jerks in flight suits, nor a shortage of incompetents with toolboxes.

I would imagine that it is difficult to expect a production super in a pickup truck to solve problems when they are selected by rank and not by skill or knowledge. Isn't that the same way that other lead people are selected?

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I understand exactly what you are saying about overspeed protection and LSGI, but we have an ops check that not only tells you that you have overspeed protection, but at what exact RPM it kicks in at.
I'm very familiar with that check - it's part of the -6 FCF. But IIRC, it's also an FCF failure if the button doesn't activate LSGI regardless of whether or not the overspeed check works. I've never had that on an FCF (and I've done a lot - currently work as a contract FCF/ferry pilot with ARINC), but if I had, I would've accomplished the rest of the engine runs & data gathering before terminating. I would not have flown it on an FCF or training line. If it was an operational mission and I had no LSGI, I'd do the overspeed check as you suggest and take it if it's good - we can fix it after the war. If we're on the road w/o any MX and the plane needs to move - I'd do my best to convince leadership I could take it. And therein lies my point about your experience counting more in this instance. It also illustrates my point about the gray areas and differences and why they're there. However, ops doesn't have the option to take this plane in their books (unless it's recently changed - and books generally get more conservative, not less so). I think this is a legitimate write-up.

My point was, if we are forced to look at something minor, even when we say it's good, and it turns out as good as we say it is, we'll make sure the numbers reflect that.

I suspect we're in violent agreement on most of this - the issue is merely one of perspective. I don't know that I would put this LSGI button in the realm of 'minor'. An oil pressure gauge not reading exactly zero when shut down; minor (yet I saw a slew of planes written up for this by two FEs). Even leaky props, while a matter of relativity, are generally minor in my book.

And I'm certain we can both continue to cherry-pick stories to prove our respective points - my original point was that the books are different for a reason. And 'acceptable' writeups have changed over the years - typically they change on the ops side quicker than the MX side. Sometimes it's even local culture driven.

You also have to realize there's a 'comfort factor' on the grey area stuff. Guys with more experience are generally more comfortable with many things a greener crew would balk at. My contract FCF crew and I generally will get a plane wherever it has to be...and there's several times I can assure you an AD crew would've broken the plane. But between the three front seaters, we've probably got an accumulated 25K-30K flying hours & 75+ years experience - not your typical green-suit crew. Experience counts.

MX Hero - I love MX heroes. I've also 'made' MX heroes by fixing things for them, or launching a plane nobody else would've, or actually fixing the plane myself on one or two occasions (and I'm not talking about changing bulbs). Far more often though, it is the guy on the line who is the hero. He's out there before I get there when I'm complaining about how early it is. He's the guy turning wrenches for an on-time takeoff when I'm staying warm inside. He's the guy getting soaking wet to unplug my plane while I'm at base ops filing a flight plan and eating a doughnut. And I'm glad he's on my team because I couldn't do any of it without him. And without both of us working together, we all fail.

This type of discussion is generally better over a beer. The written word leaves out a lot & is too easily mis-understood...

There is never a shortage of jerks in flight suits, nor a shortage of incompetents with toolboxes.

Agreed. Nevertheless, we're all on the same team. It's the us-v-them attitude that keeps us from learning from each other, or teaching each other.

I would imagine that it is difficult to expect a production super in a pickup truck to solve problems when they are selected by rank and not by skill or knowledge. Isn't that the same way that other lead people are selected?

Often. Crew, generally, move up via experience - often due to tenure too - but generally by experience 'gates' (xx years & hours to upgrade to instructor, AC, etc). That's not the best filter, but better than 'grooming' for upward mobility (although that admittedly happens sometimes too).

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Excellant post USHERK.That IS the way it is.After nearly34 years in aircraft maintance,both A.F. and industry,I've found that atleast 95% of the time ops. and maint. work well together.There are times when they don't and sometimes personalty or attitude will play a part. I've said it before: if not for both maint. and ops. we'd all be gun toteing infantry.

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Had another fuel issue some years later at EDF. O dark 30 takeoff on a resupply, to Kotzebue I think it was. Cruising along, sun just coming up. #2 engine started showing low FF, torque, and TIT. Initially thought throttle cable, looked out at engine but it was still in the shade. Told the AC to make a right turn, as soon as the sun hit the engine, the entire cowling was a sheet of fluid. Told him to cage the engine, he did, then I explained what I saw. Got clearance back to EDF. Didn't reverse the inboards on landing. Sat on the hardstand while maintenance worked the engine. Or should I say a bit off the hardstand area since they had power on the aircraft and were going to pressurize the fuel system. Engine troop got drenched with fuel as soon as they pressurized the system. From what they told us one of the fuel lines going to the burner can had cracked and was spewing fuel under pressure. Guess that we got lucky that we didn't have an engine fire.

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With the exception of stories like George's above, minor leaks didn't bother me too much (remember, I flew on Transafrik's clapped out Hercs and 727's for 7 years), it was when it quit leaking that concerned me! Plus, sitting on the ramp was not making me any money.

Don R.

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