13 October 2005 21:32
workin inna coal mine, goin down down down...life in the day of a mechanic at a facility (designed for 18 months) in it's sixth year.
arrive at work around seven, check email to make sure you haven't done anything that has HQ breathing down your neck with eighteen emails marked "urgent".
tug the airplane into the shade. this doesn't neccesarily mean under the hangar. hurricane ivan landed a tree or two on the hangar september a year ago, so we had to cut away the damaged half. it is now wider than it is long (40 by 20'). the trick is to pull it in far enough to reach the morning shade, yet not far enough that you'll be working in the water that currently has 7/8 of the hangar flooded. that would be a the good rainstorm we had last night putting three inches of water in the hangar. but we're used to that...
remove the engine cowlings, spend ten extra minutes messing with that screw that stripped out.
pull the firewall filters. spend an extra two minutes draining fuel out of the transfer line because you've currently got all the fuel out of the main tanks (which drain faster) because the one leading edge thank has a leak. more on that later.
after cleaning the filters, spend ten minutes getting the air compressor started (gas engine). oh yes, the pull cord and recoil assembly disassembled itself loooong ago (who ordered plastic?). so each time you have to wrap the pull cord three or four times around the flywheel then pull. wrap three or four times then pull. wrap three or four times then pull. you get the picture.
after blowing out the filters, reinstall. realize that when roland (your former base manager) left, he took his tools with him. this included a thin-line 1/2 inch wrench. spend 40 minutes modifying one of the company's half inch wrenches on the grinding wheel until it fits the application (this involves removing six cardboard boxes, a radome cover, a rolling chair, and the 200lb generator out of the way so you can reach the grinding wheel).
finish the firewall filter. things move smoothly for a while as you drain the oil (at four of the six or seven drain points), check your chip detector, and prepare to do fuel nozzles. it's now well after eleven. the sunshine has reached you, so it's time to move the airplane forward another ten feet. this puts you halfway into the hangar, but also into the water, necessitating a change from work shoes to rubber boots.
before fuel nozzles you decide to do the high pressure fuel pump, now that it's back in the shade. of course, HQ was the last one to do them so they torqued them down good and tight. after pulling the inlet filter you find a large quantity of junk in it (microbiological growth), something you haven't seen in that particular filter before. so into the office to call somebody in the engine shop stateside. he gives you the lowdown on the filter, why we don't typically disassemble it (poor materials) but reassures you that the junk is on the dirty side (ie, the filter cleans inside to out, instead of outside to in like most filters). so you write the part number down to order a spare later, hose it down good with brake cleaner, blow it out, change the o-rings, file the burrs off the mounting nut, and reinstall it.
dig a screwdriver and a hammer out of the toolbox to help paul get a stubborn cannon plug off in a manner that your boss most thoroughly would not approve of.
commence in on the fuel nozzles. this procedes quickly, although the wind's starting to pick up; so you have to weigh down all loose items on the table. it's now pushing one o'clock.
you can see the afternoon rain shower moving in, so you do a partial area cleanup, getting rid of tools you don't need any more before continuing with some miscellaneous inspection items.
it starts to sprinkle around two thirty, so you walk around to the otherside of the hangar, outside, and around CP (grounded until HQ sends somebody to swap engines on it, meanwhile sitting in water amost five inches up the wheels despite resting on blocks) to get a good look to the east. there's not much to see to the east, but since normally you can see a nice set of mountains that direction you put two and two together and figure that the current drizzle won't last for much longer before it becomes a downpour. you were wondering, becuase drizzles are kind of unual here. usually it goes straight from "off" to "on" without too many preliminaries.
pack up most of your tools except the ones your actively using. carry them inside (about three trips). stow all your cowlings (four per side) where the wind won't grab them and toss them across the ramp. put the O2 cart away. plug in the dehumidifer that's already inside the plane so it can at least slow the corrosion rate.
go back to work. you've got a 15' band where you're not getting actively rained on, so you pull the oil filters and get them going in the ultrasonic cleaner. if you stopped work everytime the rain started, you'd never get anything done. it starts to rain in earnest, so you pack up shop and stick the oil filters inside to finish tomorrow. now you can work on paperwork for the next couple hours, or clean up the mess in the back that you made during hte course of the day.
or not, because eric arrives at this moment from mexico about the same time that jordan gets back from dispersal. suddenly you have four people floating around the 5' x 6' space of open floor we have in our office.
by the time its all said and done it's six pm and pouring. jordan left, but eric and paul are going home with you, and devon wants to tag along for a ride to the bus station at harbourview. meanwhile you have the radome and an escape hatch in the back seat of the car--you're taking those home to make more space in the back (the "back" is our shop area, equal in size to the office. our office/shop trailer is 8' by 25', outside dimensions).
fortunatly there's an umbrella waiting around, so you move the car into the hangar to swap the hatch and radome to the trunk. thre radome doesn't fit, so you run it inside. then you all assemble in the hangar, which is by now completely flooded. the NW corner only has a half inch, so everybody's stepping around gingerly as you pile in. get comfortable, traffic slows to a crawl in heavy rain, it will take you 45 minutes to make the 24km run home. but you put ten and a half hours on the time clock, so it was worth a little extra driving.
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the above isn't a complaint. it was an observation--and observation made with a slightly sardonic smirk yes. but it was detailing yesterday's events. since today i put twelve and a half hours on the time clock, and am still damp from the rain that started around two o'clock, i'm afraid i can't manage much more than sardonic. but i'll be back in ten hours to spend the day changing out a fuel bladder. ten hours, minus an hour for commute round-trip, minus an hour to get ready for bed and get up in the morning, that gives me eight hours to sleep. what more can i ask for? give it two months and we'll be in the dry season. then i'll wish i could have an afternoon thunderstorm to listen to.
and working a sixty hour week here isn't so bad...you know that you'll be finished the inspection next week and you'll only work four days out of seven... that is, if you feel like doing that much. after all, i haven't been swimming in close to ten days (the pond at work doesn't count).
two nights ago:
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