C-130 maintainers keep 'em flying

by Staff Sgt. David Dobrydney
455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

3/8/2013 - BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan  -- Every day, Airmen from the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron are performing essential repairs to C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft.

C-130s generally spend a year here while crews rotate in and out.

Tech Sgt. Michael Raver, 455th AMXS dedicated crew chief, said that the crews currently deployed from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., may be from different squadrons at home, but they're all a team out here.

"We all come together to do our thing," Raver said. "We're the system specialists, anything from changing tires to refueling to doing the everyday inspections."

While perhaps not as glamorous as the F-15 Eagle fighters Raver once worked on before cross-training to cargo aircraft, Raver found a certain charm in them. He said many of the aircraft earn themselves nicknames.

For example, he pointed to one C-130 and said it was dubbed 'Gizmo' after a character in the movie Gremlins, "because we're always chasing gremlins around it."

Raver said that because the C-130s are aging aircraft, each day presents a new challenge. Senior Airman Zach Pectol, 455th EAMXS crew chief, added that in a deployed environment those challenges take on an added urgency.

"You know there's a real mission to get done, it's not just a training mission," Pectol said, "so if something breaks you're on point to get [it fixed]."

On the other hand, both Raver and Pectol marveled at the versatile, 'go anywhere' nature of the C-130.

"Very rarely will these things not fly because of weather," Pectol said. "Just recently, we had a snowstorm and we wiped the snow off the plane, de-iced it, put heater cards on the prop[eller]s and [it] took off."

When he cross-trained, Raver found that just learning the details between the two airframes was the biggest challenge.

"The workload is about the same, the pace is a little slower on the heavy side," he said. However, he said when comparing the missions of dropping munitions to dropping cargo, "it can be just as satisfying."