VP and their misunderstanding of the word "preflight"

[Treetop Flyer]

 

[zippy]

So this entire time you guys have been accounting for the brief into the preflight?

Aircraft preflight starts at brief time on most occasions... Flight Engineers and In Flight Technicians are out at the plane starting the preflight while the tactical crew is briefing.

 

[Pags]

Nope, no HEFOE signals. Not sure why we don't do it. I stopped asking why we do dumb things, and don't do smart things long ago. It saves my head from all the bruising smashing it against a wall tends to produce.

I share a flightline and a maintenance control with P-3s. It always amazes me how differently they do things from the helo world. If I had to guess (and that's all it'd be) I'd say that no troubleshooters stems from when your AWs had rates. Why have troubleshooters standing by when you have 8-9 guys who can fix the problem right there? FEs for motors and flight stuff, IFTs for the tube stuff, and the radar and acoustic guys for their specific stuff. Even when helo crewmen were also maintainers, there'd only be at most two of them on most days, so you'd still need troubleshooters for the big stuff. And carrier aviation loves troubleshooters. Always thought it was interesting to see the C-2s launch out of BAH; they'd have all sorts of troubleshooters out on the line decked out like they were on the boat. They went through the same routine that they'd do on the cat before the COD taxied out.

 

[Pags]

Aircraft preflight starts at brief time on most occasions... Flight Engineers and In Flight Technicians are out at the plane starting the preflight while the tactical crew is briefing.

Yeah, you guys also have the brief, the planeside brief, and probably a few others for good measure.

 

[BACONATOR]

I don't doubt you or what the slide you saw said, but I wonder if the books were cooked at all on that. Not because I think our aircraft are any better; quite the contrary. As someone who is flying the oldest helos in the Navy fleet, I know your pain. It just makes me wonder how the above is possible when VP guys complain so much about maintenance setbacks. Then again, the answer may be it's BECAUSE you guys stick it out for 5+ hours to go execute your mission. Helo guys usually give up by then and cancel the sortie and leave it for the next crew.

Well to go along with that, could it be in part that most of our training missions are 2 hour bags? Even the operational missions we typically do are 2, 4, MAYBE 6 hours typically, so we hotseat each aircraft a few times a day. So when you are the 1st of 3 bags going out that day, not a lot of time to slide to the right (especially if the card has a 2.0 requirement), so if you can't get off deck within a half-hour-ish of your T/O time, you CNX and let the next crew take it early, or shut down.

Do P-3 crews ever hot seat aircraft and fly multiple flights a day? With missions lasting several hours, it sounds like you get one flight per day on each bird, is that right?

 

[zippy]

Yeah, you guys also have the brief, the planeside brief, and probably a few others for good measure.

You have no idea...

 

[Recovering LSO]

For perspective: 22 jet strike at NFL today. Data dump at 0600. Mission planning from then until 1158 as last KBCs are coming off the press. Overall brief from 1200 to 1245. Element brief from 1245 to 1315. Section brief from 1315 to 1330. Dress, read book and walk between 1315 and 1345. Element check in at 1415 (check in completed in aircraft that have KYs and HQ already loaded. LSP goes off IAW with KBC. This included numerous aircraft with BuNos that started with a 158xxx.

 

[Fezz CB]

There have been times when crews have "hot swapped" with another crew once they landed. However, flying multiple missions in the same day with the same crew, I didnt get the chance to experience that during my JO tour. Maybe the other crusty P-3 guys can chime in.

Also, when did I start this thread??? Great, the spot light, my favorite...

 

[IRfly]

Only done the multiple mission thing once--my first flight in Iraq we did the standard 3-hour brief/preflight, went onstation, but after less than an hour had a malfunction the required rtb. We dumped fuel/burned down, landed, and did another 2.5-3.0 hours preflighting another plane, took off again, and flew about 7.0 (lucky it was a short transit). Average day .

 

[HAL Pilot]

Out of curiosity, why are NFOs doing crypto loads and not ATs? The SDO usually loads the CYZ-10, but the ATs are who actually do the loading in my old HSC squadron.

Some of the reasons from my P-3 days:
- Unlike many other aircraft, the crypto boxes are all easily accessible in the plane.
- Many missions require multiple crypto changes during the flight.
- Many times P-3s det with only the aircrew and very few maintainers - there is always a Nav and a 3P (for 2-man rule).

 

[PropAddict]

We send out our ATs/AEs to fire up the system and have it up and running when the aircrew walks on the Hummer. To include the backup bird for a big event/Event 1 in combat. Leave some ATAN in the tube as a fire watch, and power it down once the primary bird is airborne.

Just a case where other communities can learn from others.

We have a shit hot AWV1 who was a former AT1 who worked on E2's for the last 13 years. He does 10x what our normal IFTs do and can't understand why they don't do more in terms of preflights. The only answer I get is that they want the operators to do all the stuff with their own systems, so that when it fails in flight they can fix it, rather than have one dude running around trying to fix everything. Also, VP barely trusts O's with crypto; somebody would stroke out if we suggested E's do it.

Why we don't have troubleshooters assigned to each event standing by to handle gripes, I'll never know. Compared to an 18 squadron, we have more maintainers and fewer aircraft, so it certainly seems possible.

 

[Gatordev]

Why we don't have troubleshooters assigned to each event standing by to handle gripes, I'll never know. Compared to an 18 squadron, we have more maintainers and fewer aircraft, so it certainly seems possible.

This is the part that has me scratching my head. It may just boil down to "this is how we've always done it."

I can't afford to have trouble-shooters waiting right now. I just don't have the people to do it, but in my first fleet squadron, we'd have them. I see other squadrons have them out there, here, as well.

 

[jollygreen07]

With every new thread that comes up about the Warpig, I am further reminded why I didn't select P-3s..

I can't even imagine what you guys are going to do with that shiny new P-8... Bitch about the "good old days" when preflights used to take 84 hours and how one of your IFTs missed the birth of his child because he was preflighting yadda yadda yadda?

Ya'll have fun with that.

 

[twobecrazy]

As a prior IFT... I would do everything I possibly could for preflight... Systems checks... whatever... I had most of the operators systems stuff done by the time they arrived on the plane... I would also be troubleshooting some gripe if I had time...

It always seemed to be on cue that when the operators came out... Shit hit the fan... The best part of my day was approx the hour or so I was able to preflight by myself...

Edit: The worst preflight by far was Beartrap... That thing took 4 hours minimum for the IFT...

 

[Flugelman]

We have a shit hot AWV1 who was a former AT1 who worked on E2's for the last 13 years. He does 10x what our normal IFTs do and can't understand why they don't do more in terms of preflights. The only answer I get is that they want the operators to do all the stuff with their own systems, so that when it fails in flight they can fix it, rather than have one dude running around trying to fix everything. Also, VP barely trusts O's with crypto; somebody would stroke out if we suggested E's do it.

Why we don't have troubleshooters assigned to each event standing by to handle gripes, I'll never know. Compared to an 18 squadron, we have more maintainers and fewer aircraft, so it certainly seems possible.

Times have really changed. I did a stint as the squadron comm officer as a Chief because we were short handed in SLJO's. I also did all the KY stuff as an AT1 IFT/RO, in addition to keeping all the other stuff up and running. We didn't usually have anyone from the shop just standing by during a preflight as they were pretty busy taking care of the other 8 planes in the squadron. Unless I had multiple down systems I could usually take care of it on my own and just have the parts sent out to the plane.

I don't know why everyone's getting wrapped around the axle on what constitutes a preflight in the different communities. It is what it is...