Aviation support staff works hard to keep aircraft safe

 For Cpl. Lauren Hall, becoming an avionics technician in the Marine Corps was an easy choice.

“I’ve wanted to be a Marine since I was little,” she said with grease-stained hands and permanent dirt under her fingernails. “I knew I wanted to do something in aviation and I like electronics so it fits perfect.”

Hall is one of thousands of aviation support crew members who spend 12-hour days working on Marine Corps aircraft like the CH-53E Super Stallion, ensuring the copter is ready for the pilots when they take it out.

But Hall doesn’t complain about her long days and seemingly never-ending list of tasks requiring wiring and electronics to be reworked on the aircraft.

“The 12 hours and the hard work that you put in — it always pays off when the bird does go up and comes back safely,” Hall said. “I take pride in what I do and it does take a lot of man hours but I mean that’s why we’re the few and the proud.”

Like Hall, Cpl. George Braneff takes great pride in his work as a crew chief with Heavy Marine Helicopter Unit 464. Crew chiefs spend their days changing oil filters, replacing rotor blades and working on gear boxes if the aircraft isn’t flying; but when they’re in the air, the crew chief is considered the pilot and co-pilot’s right-wing man, taking responsibility for everything in the aircraft from the back of the cockpit to the tip of the tail.

“The aircraft can’t move without a crew chief,” Braneff said. “The pilot studies the control systems, but the crew chief studies the mechanical systems, the tactics systems and the weapons systems.”

Whether it be cargo, people or weapons, crew chiefs are responsible for all of it, ensuring everything gets where it needs to go.

In addition to their own responsibilities, crew chiefs have to be ready at the drop of a dime to help the pilots with whatever they need in the cockpit — often navigation and communication support. They’re expected to know every inch of the aircraft’s mechanics and what makes it fly. Crew chiefs are so well-versed on the aircraft they’re assigned to, that should the need ever arise, they could probably fly the plane themselves, Braneff said.

“It would be a piece of cake to walk out there and turn that (aircraft) up,” Braneff said with a grin. “It’s our responsibility to know absolutely everything — as much as we can about the aircraft.”

Hall and Braneff both recently returned from a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan, which they said gave them the opportunity to put all the training they’ve done at New River to use.

“Being deployed is the only place we get to truly do our job,” Braneff said. “(At New River) we do training, so you don’t get to see the effect — you don’t get see the faces on other Marines when you bring them food and they haven’t eaten in two days. It’s just nice to be out there and actually see the impact that you’re making.”

Hall agreed with Braneff, comparing her time in Afghanistan to her high school basketball days.

“I played basketball in high school and for me practice was important, but it showed on game day,” she said. “So here, it’s practice and then the whole seven months you’re in Afghanistan is seven months of game day.”

Story and photo:   http://www.jdnews.com