Newton Was Right

By AT2 BakerBy AT2 Baker

so what harm could it do. Boy was I wrong!

Everyone knew their job, and things were going smoothly. Using a FLIR beam, adapter and a bomb hoist, we lowered the aft section down onto the Baker-Box and rolled it under the wing of an adjacent aircraft. We then chained it down, waiting for the wash job to get done.

Back down in the shop, maintenance told me that the forward section and optic stabilizer had not been received, and the pod was going to get stowed in the hangar bay, meaning we didn’t have to put it back on the aircraft.

After working on other gripes and doing flight-deck drills for several hours, we finally had time to get the proper FLIR skid. A junior technician and I went up to

Substitute this component for an apple and the results are the the flight deck to transfer the pod same. from the Baker-Box to the skid. We unchained the pod and posi

WFLIR skid. We then picked up the e were going through our normal morning pod to transfer it, but my co-worker lost his grip. He maintenance routine, when maintenance contried valiantly to regain his grip but was not successful. trol directed us to download a FLIR POD to The aft end of the pod had dropped about six to complete a 14-day wash job. We normally wouldn’t have eight inches, smashing the power supply into the deck. to do this, but the pod was missing the optic stabilizer I set the front end of the pod on the deck, made sure and the pod forward section, so the aft section had to my co-worker wasn’t injured, and assessed the situation. be removed to prevent water intrusion. It should have I was thankful nobody was hurt, and we finished the been a simple event. transfer, locking down the pod on the right skid.

I sent the troops to gather all the necessary equipThe power supply was dented severely and had to ment to get the job done. They collected everything, be BCM’d. except for one major piece of GSE: a proper FLIR We could have prevented this damage had we used pod skid. Our pod was in the junkyard, but it was the right support equipment from the beginning. I buried behind ordnance skids, drop tanks, and traclearned a valuable lesson that day. Maintenance shorttors. Instead of taking the time to dig one out, we just cuts cannot be tolerated, and they can lead to unforgivgrabbed anything we could find, which happened to be ing mishaps. My incident is a classic example of why we a Baker-Box. I figured the pod wouldn’t be sitting long, must adhere strictly to all procedures. tioned the Baker-Box alongside the Petty Officer Baker works in the AT shop at VFA-113.