World famous fly-off

Mech, Spring, 2009 by Dowdy

Troubleshooters work in a fast-paced, highly demanding, and unforgiving environment. They have to ensure every aircraft on the flightdeck is ready to launch at a moment's notice. Even the final flyoff at the end of a deployment is stressful. No one wants a jet to break, forcing personnel to stay on board.

Anything that goes wrong usually does so in the short period of time you have to get all the aircraft safely off the ship and headed home. Preparation is the key to ensuring fly-off goes as safely and efficiently as possible.

Our air wing fly-off was moved up four hours because a typhoon was closing in our ship, USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). The pilots of our 10 FA-18C aircraft would be manning their jets at approximately 0600. The planned flight schedule called for a staggered launch of three waves of aircraft, taking off 15 minutes apart. This timing meant it was going to be one big wave, and every jet had to head to the catapults at the same time.

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I was scheduled to come to work an hour and a half before the pilots were supposed to man up, which didn't leave me much time to check the jets before the pilots arrived. As the troubleshooter LPO, I rely on my night shift to do a good job preparing the jets for early morning launches.

Once in the shop, I checked out my tools and did a pre-op on my float coat. I headed to the flight-deck when it was time to double-check the aircraft and greet all the pilots. I made my rounds of our aircraft until I arrived at one jet and found the plane captain (PC) leaning against a ladder, talking to one of the PC trainees.

I started looking over the jet before the pilot arrived. As part of my normal routine, I check the emergency brake's accumulator pressure in the nose-landing-gear wheelwell. When I poked my head in, I noticed the accumulator was reading 800 psi low. I asked the PC if he had pumped up the APU since he had been there, but he replied he, too, just had arrived. He added, however, that the night-shift PC had told him everything was ready to go.

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I told the PC to go pump up the APU right away, so we could determine if everything was ready for the launch. As he pumped, I watched the pressure on the accumulator climb to 2,400 psi and stop. He called out from the starboard main-landing-gear wheelwell that he had 3,000 psi on the APU gage. I now knew the nitrogen pre-charge for the emergency brake's accumulator was low and needed servicing before launch.

As I started to look around for a NAN-4B nitrogen-servicing cart, I saw five pilots climbing up the stairs from the catwalk. I was running out of time to get the aircraft ready for launch, so I hustled toward flight-deck control, where the NAN-4B was usually kept. It wasn't there. I looked around but didn't see it, so I assumed the Prowler squadron had turned it into AIMD for the in-port period. I had only one option left: Our 3,000-psi, portable nitrogen bottle was in our line shack on the bow. I changed course and headed there.

The portable bottle was empty. I had to take the time to charge the bottle and get back to the jet as soon as possible. Normally, all of our tools and IMRL are packed away in tri-walls the night before to be offloaded later in the day after the fly-off, leaving few tools with which to deal with the unexpected. Fortunately, we only were going back to Atsugi for a week, so we had packed up only enough tools for a small detachment. I was happy to see that we still had a servicing hose and adapter to charge the portable nitrogen bottle. I called the nitrogen plant and had them transfer 3,000 psi to the flight deck. Then I gathered everything I needed and headed toward the island, where the servicing port was located.

After servicing the portable bottle, I went back to the aircraft. I could see the other jets were up and ready, and the jet needing maintenance definitely was running behind. After 20 minutes of scrambling, we finally had the accumulator serviced to the appropriate pre-charge, and got the jet started and headed to the catapults in time to launch.

Even though I was able to fix this problem and make the launch on time, I learned some valuable lessons. More proactive supervision, planning, preparation, and clear communication of expectations between day and night shifts could have prevented this painful evolution. I should have come in earlier to verify the jets indeed were ready to go flying. I should have verified the night before that my night shift thoroughly understood what I expected from them. That way, they would have done a better job and screened them more closely for readiness. Finally, as a troubleshooter, you always need to have a charged and ready nitrogen-servicing bottle ready on the flight deck.

Petty Officer Dowdy is a troubleshooter at VFA-192.

By AE1 Dowdy