MILITARY LIFE and contact thread (NO TROLLS! None at all)

[nobodyspecial]

Sounds like the mechanics from my first tour, they were real mechanics. Seems like most, if not all of our mechanics this last time were simply parts changers, not real mechanics.

[Greywolf]

Originally Posted by armydude

Just found this thread, no idea how I missed it earlier.

On Friday the 27th of Mar 2009 I was formally retired from the Army after 9 years in and 9 years with the Navy. 18 1/2 total years completed. I was medically retired because of injuries sustained in Iraq from 2005 - 2008. After having one surgery and am scheduled for more I am still desiring to go with my unit next month to Afghanistan. I can't. I will however ask that ya'll keep everybody in mind and prayer and if ANYBODY NEEDS ANYTHING don't hesitate to call down here for help!! I may live in south Florida but this is MY club as well!!

I vowed that if I made it back I would get my dream truck and believe it or not i found it, stole it-price wise, and use it as my therapy tool! I want to thank everybody for everything they have done for others and will do in the future. I have lost a bunch of friends but will keep their memory alive by doing the best I can everyday! We should all do that, for everybody, military or not.

Ian Harrington SGT(Ret)
20th SFG(AB)
Medic

Please tell me you GOT your retirement! Is that what "Medical Retirement" means? I was about all the way broken down by the time I left the navy but somehow I made it to 20.

Anyone who went through all the stuff you did deserves "RETIRED" status and full PX rights.

~AT1 Jake

[Greywolf]

Originally Posted by mongo75

Yeah, we got 5 1114's, and they were all good trucks except for 1 that only had 1 radio, no BFT, and no ICS, oh yeah, and no turret hatch cover so you can imagine what it looks like after a sandstorm LOL. But here we are 3 months later, and I guess time and the crappy desert trails at 30-50 mph are taking thier toll. Also the last team to have them didn't do too much to them, kinda just enough to keep them running. Hell, I'm supposed to be the intel SNCO on this BTT but funny as it sounds, I know more about vehicle maintenance and repairs than our eschelon 2 mech we got with us. He knows the truck somewhat, but don't ask him to change an injector.... Plus, being out in Husaybah, on the Syrian border next to the Euphrates, we don't get jack for parts, at least in any decent amount of time. Last time we ordered a radiator, it took almost 2 months to get here from Al Asad, a whole 3 hour drive away. Somebody needs to get shot around here!! So, tomorrow I'm gonna take 1 oil cooler and 2 radiators to the SeeBees in the hopes that their HVAC guy can fix them like he did the last one. We need up vics and I can't count of our own freakin supply system to help.

LOOK HERE:

One of the few good things I can say about USS Nimitz when I was in the gulf on her/it/that was that they were playing with the idea of a Combat Zone IMF (Intermediate Maintenance Facility)

Broken stuff from things that carrier based techs were not trained to fix were flown out by helo or COD's and the IMA guys on the carrier tried their hand at it. MOST of that stuff they could weld, repair, or find a way to get back to rights one way or another!

It worked for army and marine helo outfits. Send a recommend up the flagpole and see what they can do. I don't know who is in the gulf right now, but if USS John C. Stennis or USS Carl Vinson is out there - they always "CAN DO" and will back you up any way they (f-word) can!!!!

They have COMPLETE Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Departments deployed onboard, and can do damn near anything a DEPOT can do.

They also have complete machine shops below decks that can fabricate anything that has to be "MADE" ("Blackshoe Side")

Since AIMD includes ground support equipment, they can do Diesel also - and may be able to airlift volunteers ashore if needed


I served on both, and they are the best in the US NAVY

[mongo75]

I hear ya Wolf- when I was on the USS Essex during 9/11, we had some BAD corrosion problems on the FLIR/TSU (target/sight unit) thing that looks like upside R2-D2 on the nose of a Huey. Basically the entire amlunim plate mount was powder from the plane spending it's entire life on Okinawa. THere where no spares on the ship, but being an airframes guy, I told them I'll make a new one damnit!! So I went to the machine shop, selected a chunk of 3/8" plate, and worked with the machinist to make two new ones. Fit like a glove! Also, there are retards that take an access panel off to get at something, and lay the panel on the deck. Well, of course a CH-53 will come in an blow the damn thing off the deck into the deep blue, so another time I spent from 1630-0830 making an entire new louvered panel, 24x18", complete with a bent U-channel and a bunch of rivets. The crappy part is the stupid (female w/ complex) AM1 running the ships AIMD (or MALS as we call it) wouldn't let me just use thier tools, she wanted a damn maint. request. FINE (femle dog) I just waited till she left at 1800 to go back when the Marines were running the shop, and they let me have run of the house while they played video games LOL. Long story short I get the job done!!

[Greywolf]

Night Check RULES!!!!

When it absolutely, definitely, HAS TO BE DONE - ask an outlaw


TRUTH: People end up on NIGHT CHECK because they don't need supervision, and they are allergic to "RED TAPE". You will never find the best techs and mechs surrounded by brass...

[alchymist]

So that's what they mean by "Getting down to brass tacks"....sailing around the obstacles....Never knew!




I stay away from Liberals because I’m allergic to nuts.

[Greywolf]

There are an awful lot of things never documented that had to be done to make something somewhere "FMC" (Full Mission Capable). And it had to be done right then and there.

I know it's a bad practice from the accountability point of view, but so is throwing away spare parts - which QA audits generally cause on a routine basis.

I've often wondered what division officers thought was going on when accolades came from squadrons for things that were not recorded anywhere - except for a few of them, other than some DO's that were in on what was really up and the occasional MMCO that was a maverick themselves.

"CAN DO" often comes from "Fasten your seatbelts, we're really going to do this..."

But since Navy/Marine Corps Achievement Medals all have to have a paper trail of documentation - all that ever comes from it is a profound sense of accomplishment and the appreciation of the few who knew about it.

That calls to a very special kind of an individual, of the old time sort.


We talk about being mission oriented, and upwardly mobile, all of these things. When promotion outweighs getting things done, and qualification is more important than expertise a rift is created. The career guys turn one way, and the craftsmen turn the other.

There is one phrase that has always stuck in my guts and it is this: The simple question "ARE YOU GOOD?"

Sucking down quals left and right without becoming good at them never produces anything but a theoretically qual'd puke that can do nothing at all well. (IMHO)

To this add the career ladder climbers that abandon what they do to get one more paygrade up. If they do - they got there without becoming masters at what they were supposed to be doing, so we have people in charge of people that were not good at what the people they are in charge of are intended to accomplish. I rarely met a Chief that knew what I was about. Senior Chiefs were almost always career managers that really had forgotten most of the electronics they ever learned. They wanted those goddamned brown shoes....

To my credit - many techs have copies of what I wrote in passdown logs at Miramar back in the eighties to help them troubleshoot certain IFF transponders, and if I had had a computer and digital camera back then god only knows how much more detailed I could have made it. I know the RT-859A/APX-72 like the insides of my own eyelids. I used to keep the main chassis diagram next to my phone when I lived offbase to answer questions from the guys on shift at the time. I pinned it to the wall, using thumbtacks.

If you see a xerox copy of the pages from an old passdown log at your bench, with one of the pages blacked out with a marker (because I went off finally, and realised I couldn't write what I did about day-check in an official navy document) that includes diagrams of the pinout to T-1 and the HUNTRON TRACKER signature of a working (GOOD) PS1 - I wrote that.

Treasure it, because what is there still works damned good.

What MY TEAM (NX) developed at Miramar NAS back then brought reliability to that system to such a degree that we identified one RT later that had been flying for five years with ZERO failures. It had a burned out RF tube when it finally came back, which is to be expected. they only last so many flight hours.

A year earlier there were "Y-CODES" stacked up left and right. A "Y-CODE" means "Recieved Bad From Supply".

My people changed that forever, or at least for the time we were there. If anyone out there knows Trent Hines - tell him I said hello.

I believe he is in Norfolk, but is likely out by now....

(FILE THIS under MIL-HIST 101/AIMD)

[alchymist]

Greywolf, I know what you're talking about. Every shop I ever worked in had an "underground" rating system, existing only in the mind. Everyone knew who was the real tech and who was there just to fill a slot. There are usually a lot of off the record things that one can do to make a job easier. When I worked for a major defense contractor, we had the ISO thing, and I was requires to label all my notebooks, annotated schematics, etc with the "For Reference Only" labels to avoid getting gigged for improper documentation or procedures. Still, I think I was the last surviving tech to do factory level repair on the AN/ALR79 series.......and all my documentation now is probably in a landfill somewhere.


“To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them”. - George Mason, American Statesman (1725-92)

[Greywolf]

yeah I know - but we always kept logs that an industrious dude could copy out some of at the local admin (better yet supply) and pass on....

That was how the details got handed on to the techs that kept our own notebooks.

And those books were personal effects! (winkezzz)

I wouldn't discount the chance that the best info may still be around

[tseekins]

Originally Posted by Greywolf

Our people are over there, and I respect them. I was one for twenty years.

Please consider this the NCO club, the "O" Club, the "CHIEFS" Club, whatever...

First of all - we will do whatever we can for you if you need it. I think I can say that outright with all of our brothers and sisters backing it up one hundred percent.

If something needs attention at home, find one of us in your home area and PM or E-MAIL them and we (I'm Sure!) will do whatever we can for you if you are overseas. For sensitive matters be sure to use a PM or an E-MAIL link, these I believe are fairly secure through FTE.

YOU ARE OUR OWN.

The legacy is unbroken...

Now maybe those of us who are back here can help in new ways. Retired, active, or whatever.

If there is anything we can do for you, tell us. Even if we can't do it ourselves we can pass it on to someone who can.

We do not forget, we don't just go away, and we want you back!

We WILL keep the faith.

WE WILL WELCOME YOU HOME....


Think of it as the new "MARS" system. We'll do whatever we can for you.


~Greywolf
AT1/AW USN (RET)

PS: NO sensitive information is to be posted in this thread. Screw "CNN"

Count me in. One of the biggest problems I've seen and experienced is navigating the VA system for those that are entitled for what ever reason.

Remember, each state has it's very own VA office in addition to the myriad of VA medical centers and main offices, not to mention local chapters of the DAV, AMVETS, etc, etc. Use these people fore they are there at our disposal and they are happy to do your bidding.

Tim

[Greywolf]

We have done what no one else could - because we can.
We did it because we care.
We never quit, and few understand it
But someone must so do....


We are the reason that freedom exists
And freedom is not free.....
I salute everyone of you!
The civilians will never understand what we have done...


~AT1 Jacobs

GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!
They are our own

~AMEN

[mongo75]

Hello everyone from Al Asad Iraq, AKA- Camp Cupcake. Man these guys got it good here- a pool, movie theater, freshly cooked food, scooped ice cream, dominoes, bk, green bean coffee, and all other kinds of niceties. They guys never leave the base except for aviators and a very small amount on local patrol. I'd like to take them back to COP Gannon where I'm at and have them live in a nice wood building with gravel, not concrete for a walkway, no entertainment save what you brought. hehe, I pride myself in roughing it. AND, I do so without having congress bribing me with "unsatisfactory living standards" extra pay!!!

[nobodyspecial]

unsatisfactory living pay? I thought only the air force got that, and they were all in hardened buildings nicer than apartments I have lived in before, lol.

[mongo75]

yeah that was my point- I get good old "regular" pay to live in dirt, and dodge IED's, while "another service" and that service alone gets paid more to lie on a cozy safe base far from any threat. I just don't understand the whole ass-backward idea there??? I'd just be happy if Congress took away that extra unneccesary pay and made everyone's pay in the military equal, the way it should be. Then Congress can use the "extra" pay money for more important things like, umm, what was that again.... Oh yeah, bullets, armor plating, IED defeating devices, stuff like that. If someone has heartburn giving up thier ice cream and room service so that a few more Marines and Soldiers can return home to continue being husbands, fathers, and sons, then they can see me personally, and I can guarantee you it will be a one-way conversation, one they won't soon forget.

[Greywolf]

Someone once explained to me the difference in the way the air force builds their bases versus the other branches-

They said that when the navy, marines, army, etc... build an airbase the very first thing they do is build an operational airstrip and facilities, then start on the housing and what all. In this model - the money runs out just about when the commissary and PX are going up, and then they ask for an appropriation to build housing, rec facilities, and all the rest.
(IE: Non mission critical development)

The Air Force builds housing, rec fac's, clubs, and so on as priority one (including the local AF College) and generally runs out of budgetted funds in the middle of bulldozing the first runway.....

Guess who gets a higher priority for additional funding?

It's FLAWLESS!