Photo By Gunnery Sgt. Courtney Glen White | Cpl. Jason Warner, the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 251 seat shop night supervisor,...... read more read more
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Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 251’s seat shop is responsible for ensuring that the Thunderbolt pilots will be safe if anything goes wrong while flying their F/A-18 Hornet.
Even though maintainers are very thorough with their work and safety checks, there are many things that can go wrong when flying several thousand feet above the ground. Because of this, the VMFA-251 seat shop stays busy ensuring that if anything should go wrong, their pilots will have one final option.
“Hopefully our hard work will never have to show, but I am 100 percent confident that if a pilot needs to eject, our equipment will work properly,” said Cpl. Zachary Brown, a VMFA-251 seat mechanic. “I think about the pilots while I’m working on the equipment, they should be able to feel confident and not second guess if their equipment will work properly.”
Ejection seats use a series of explosive charges rather than one uncontrolled blast through the top of the aircraft. The series of functions react like a domino effect - when the pilot pulls the ejection handle, two rocket motors blow the canopy off the aircraft, straps holding the pilot tightens and secures him to the seat and charges go off, pushing the pilot out and away from the aircraft.
There are 10 Marines in VMFA-251’s seat shop that are divided up into a day crew and night crew to ensure that the equipment is ready to go before and after every flight throughout the flight schedule.
“Seat shop is full of motivated Marines that do an outstanding job with some of the most intricate systems in the aircraft,” said Capt. Christopher Duncan, a VMFA-251 pilot. “They have changed out equipment and certified a cockpit foreign object debris free in a matter of minutes in order to make a launch; they did it by the book and yet with a sense of urgency.”
The seat shop is responsible for many parts on the aircraft besides the obvious ejection seat. They are also responsible for the escape, environmental and fire extinguishing systems.
There are 13 sub-systems in the environmental control system, which control the cockpit environment and the avionic equipment on the aircraft. These systems control air flow to different parts of the aircraft, cool the radar transmitter, pressurize the canopy seal and more.
“I take pride in how in depth we are with our aircraft systems compared to other shops,” said Sgt. Travis D’Ewart, the VMFA-251 seat shop non-commissioned officer-in-charge. “I’m proud we are doing our part in supporting the Marines on the ground.”
The Marines in seat shop work alongside all of the other maintainers aboard the flight deck of the Enterprise to make sure that the pilots won’t have any issues while supporting the troops on the ground.
“The seat shop Marines are an important part of our team because like all of our other Marines, they contribute to our ability to support the coalition forces on the ground by keeping our weapons [F/A-18] in good working order,” Duncan stated.
| Date Taken: | 05.12.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 05.12.2011 23:32 |
| Story ID: | 70298 |
| Location: | BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 72 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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