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Rosco
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Woah, let's not jump to conclusions here fellas. The military techs take very good care of the machines. Seeing a dirty tailboom isn't a sure fire link to a shoddy maintenance program. I've seen lots of dirty booms flying the civilian skies. We must consider the duration and frequency of this aircraft's tasking before the incident (ie. was it on a SAR mission all day before this flight), how much of the discoloration is actually stain (not soot, the smiley face isn't very bright) and what type of fuel they were burning. Also, this situation was supposedly caused by a power loss, so if it was engine related we might be looking at civilian overhaul facilities. I'm just playing "devil's advocate" as I have no real idea what lead to the crash. I just wanted put forth a different mindset.

 

 

Cheers.

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Donny, your point is valid, but I don't see many dirty civvy tailbooms on aircraft that are hangared every night and fly a few hundred hours a year.

 

The stats I've seen recently don't show an increase in mechanicals. They do tend to lag behind real life though, because of the time it take to determine cause in many cases. Might be an interesting article at some point soon.

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Guest graunch1

:o Maybe the under-worked squadron pilots could spend part of their day away from perusing the job boards to wash their own helicopters???

I know in many companies this is jst not done at the drivers are too important. I worked for one very large corporate operation and the pilots would never lower themselves to touching a cleaning tool - one who did was severly ostracized by the others <_<

However in many small and very good operations, the AME takes care of the fixin' and the pilto takes care of the groomin'

 

What's the take out there on who cleans the machine?

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The Griffons are maintaining a Canadian C of A as well as all military mods. This is a new thing and as far as I know only the Griffon does this although the Cormorant may also do this. True military types like the CF18 only maintain military mods and updates. Since the process of maintaining a CofA is recent. This came about because of the debacle of trying to sell our used B206 and B212 and that we simply could not sell them because no ADs had ever been carried out except the necessary ones for safety of flight.

 

As for the black paint, it is because the tails get very dirty and yes, we do wash the aircraft however the military fuel we use tends to make aircraft much dirtier than the jet fuel used by commercial operators. When our Sea Kings are deployed we wash the entire airframe every 25 hours but this is due to operating at sea in a salt water environment.

 

Having said that the machines (Griffons) should be washed more often if dirt was a contributing factor to not noticing damage which led to a failure. I am not sure what the schedule is like for those machines.

 

I don't want to give the wrong impression about our technicians, they are very good and work **** hard. The problem we are having is similar to commercial ops in that our techs lack enough experience, we cannot "make" a qualified tech fast enough that we loose people as they get out. Havins said that the two systems are totally different and as a pilot I must admit that I just don't understand. To this day it perplexes me completely how about a dozen guys can maintain the Slingsby and Jet Ranger at the NFTC run school in Portage La Prairie where DND used to have three times that amount in two shifts????? I just don't know what DND does so different and only someone who had worked on both sides of the fence could possibly explain it.

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I can say that probably 90% of the pilots that I've worked with always took pride in their ride and pitched in to keep it lookin' good. Mind you their were a few that thought they were above that task and I imagine there will always be.

 

Cheers

 

R B)

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Guest graunch1

Hey Vortex Ring,

 

As one of those who has worked both sides of the fence, (my personal opinion)the reason that the military has so many techs per a/c vs the civil world is the fact that many of the military types have little experience. Also the system seems to demand it.

 

That being said, most military maintenance outfits are run by an Engineering Officer who usually is a Pinky Ring engineer and all he knows about maintenance is what he read in a book, civvy operations are usually run by the guy with the most experience.

 

Military maintenance operations are strictly dictated by the military manuals, civil ops are dictated by maint manuals and common sense.

 

Case in point, a few years ago I was in Yellowknife doing some training at the Twin Otter Sqn, it was -45 outside and only one TO was servicable, 2 were in the snowbank and the fourth was awaiting warmer weather so they could rig the FCUs.

The military book only went to -20 on the FCU rigging graph. I suggested that they might talk to the guys at Air Tindi who lived in YZF and were intimatly familiar with the rigging procedures in typical northern temps. "Oh no we can't do that was the answer"

 

At this time the DnD had around 25 techs for 4 aircraft and Air Tindi had 4 AMEs for 25 a/c.

 

Different point of view on maintenance. One has to make it work to make money to pay wages, the other has to put in time in the North until they get a "better" posting.

 

BTW the military guys were all sitting around whining about how hard they were working - I suggested they should meet some of their airport compatriots to find out what work really is <_<

 

I realize this is just a snap-shot opinion so those out there still in The Herd, don't flame me if you have a job where you work hard, fix things and are very professional about it :up:

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