Arkansas Guard Airmen impart milling, asphalt training

by Senior Airman Cody Martin
188th Wing

4/30/2015 - FORT SMITH, Ark. -- Members of the 188th Civil Engineer Squadron at Ebbing Air National Guard Base here provided training for milling and asphalt from April 13-24 to a member of the Ohio Air National Guard's 200th Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineer Squadron, as well as members of the 188th Wing requiring recertification.

The 188th CES RED HORSE Training Center is the first in the Air National Guard and provides special capabilities training for RED HORSE personnel, including recertification, which occurs every three years.

The milling and asphalt training occurred on the airfield damage repair pad and Senior Master Sgt. Robert Haag II, RHTC senior instructor, provided critical oversight for the training.

"We are doing the asphalt paving and milling training," Haag said. "We also do special capabilities training with volumetric mixing, which is mixing up concrete in a portable concrete batch plant, concrete paving, crane operations and horizontal drilling."

The milling class instructed civil engineers on the functions of the machines used as well as hands-on training by physically milling a strip of asphalt that was laid down. The milling machine can mill a surface from just skimming it to milling a strip of asphalt six inches deep.

Asphalt training involved different scenarios with various road conditions featuring overhead power lines, intersections, curbs, gutters and parking lots. The Airmen are instructed on different ways to lay the asphalt out and the process of how to roll it.

"This training teaches us to implement good instruction techniques to the students coming through," Haag said. "For the students, they can take the knowledge they learned here and pass that knowledge to other Airmen."

Airman 1st Class Andrew Sneeringer, 200th RHS member, attended the training provided at the 188th Wing and impressed his instructors.

"Sneeringer was very attentive and did an outstanding job with learning how the machines operated while also performing excellent hands-on training with both machines," Haag said. "The knowledge for which he gained operating the asphalt paver and the milling machine will prove to be invaluable to him and to his unit on jobs he will be faced with in the future."

The 188th RHTC will be hosting a group of Airmen from the 203rd RHS during the May unit training assembly and have scheduled multiple classes later in May and throughout the rest of the fiscal year. The classes will include volumetric mixing, concrete paving, and further instruction on asphalt paving and milling.