Dealing with delays — and acronyms

September 26, 2006

"Welcome to our world," said Capt. Jen Fuller of Little Rock, aircraft commander.

Fuller threw up her hands and flashed a big white smile as she said it, but her eyes told of day’s stress.

This is part of the life of a C-130 Hercules crew.

We've been on the crew bus at Ramstein Airbase in Germany for a day.

Yes, in a bus, in a parking space on the flightline, for a day.

Fuller and the rest of the officers went into Air Mobility Command headquarters for hours and hours. Some of the flight engineers and crew chiefs are at the plane in the cold drizzle, trying to bring the Herc back to life.

The rest of us wait in the bus.

The plane broke down early yesterday, but the crew chiefs fixed it as best they could without replacing the part and we took off. As soon as the plane began to level off, however, the problem popped up again.

We touched down at a base about 45 miles from where we started — home of the bus we now called home.

And we've been there ever since.

They may have to send in a special maintenance team. The part has to be shipped.

When Fuller returned with the news we were staying overnight, she had arranged housing. Off to Sembach Airbase we went. There was no room at contracted housing in town, and the crew was restricted on where they could stay because myself and my photographer, Dan Hale, were with them.

I feel bad about that.

Sembach’s not too bad, though.

Tough repairs

It's been two days.

Staff Sgt. Amber Battles of Cabot, the crew chief, and Tech Sgt. Erik Pogue of Cabot, a flight engineer, spent most of the night working on the plane when we got here on the 25th, replacing a part — and the part didn't fix the problem.

A new part got in yesterday.

That's right, it's now Sept. 27.

I hear the plane could ready to go sometime in the wee hours.

And over coffee and Danish this morning in Kaiserslaughtern, Germany, the crew explained the problem to me.

Are you ready for this?

Originally the copilot's HSI went out, which affected the RMI. But the problem wasn't the HSI, as first thought. It was bigger than that.

Then they thought it was the ADI or possibly the INV because the INV affects the ADI.

Lt. Chris Bennett of Sherwood, a copilot, said he believed all along it was the EFI.

We'll see if he's right when we finally fly with our new EFI.

What does that mean?

It means the electronic flight controls were wacky and in the end, it was a bad screen — the actual viewing screen that projects all of these electronic acronyms. The EFI is the Electronic Flight Indicators. INV is Inertial Navigation Unit. ADI is Attitude Direction Indicator. HSI? That’s the horizontal Situational Indicator. And the RMI is Radio Magnetic Indicator.

Yeah, I know. It's confusing. But these are important things, telling the pilots and navigators where they are and what the plane is doing.

To recap: The EFI is connected to the INV. The INV is connected to the ADI. And the HSI is connected to the RMI. Is the ADI related to the HSI? I think so. All I know is the EFI ties it all together in one visual package. And it broke.

And it's fixed — hopefully. We'll find out when we fly.

Posted by editor at September 26, 2006 07:19 PM