A couple humorous memories from K2 airbase

[Naga_Fireball]

A few years before my son was born, my ANG unit in West Virginia had to pull up stakes during a deployment to Kuwait and go instead to Uzbekistan. A big difference between the places was that in the latter, we weren't permitted (for safety reasons!) to leave the base.

As you can imagine, people got bored.

It seems that in the past, this base we were occupying was considered moderately prepared for the eventuality of nuclear conflict. I guess it was a Russian airbase at one point (?). K2 (Kharshi Khanabad) is or was the name.

The tiny hangars that served as the HQ for mechanics and the like, if I am not mistaken, were of Soviet manufacture. They were these huge concrete stalls with a blast door and a hill of dirt over the roof and sides. From the air it probably looked like a giant root cellar with a door for a small airplane or very large tank. Lmao.

Anyway. I was bored of my freaking mind after we got moved from Kuwait. One day, decided to climb around on the roof of the hangar, and happened to find an undischarged pistol round sticking out of the dirt.

It was huge drama when this was announced to the other mechanics. The military police made a big show of coming to retrieve it. I was chided for bringing ordinance into the hangar, because it was old and could have exploded, nya na na na, etc.

Well after that happened, unfortunately people were still very bored. Somehow it came to my attention that near actual HQ (if I recall) was the entrance to an old underground bunker.

At the time I did not realize it was probably one of those old nuclear bunkers. ... lol.

We had been told not to enter confined spaces or to fuck around looking for holes to get lost in, but I couldn't help myself.

A tshirt later, I was worming down the manhole and into the dark with a flashlight. Boy was it filthy down there! Someone had used it temporarily for a primitive garbage dump.

Among the leavings was an old box full of expired glow sticks. Being the curious and enterprising type of idiot, I grabbed a handful of this shit to show the others. Similarly to the bullet incident, I was told that it was bad to bring old leaky expired shit around respectable folk.


There was one more tale, but I can't remember it, too busy laughing.

Sometime i ought to tell you guys about the water bottle incident or Lunch over the Edge.

[Naga_Fireball]

Oh shit now I remember the other bit.

One day at work something bad happened and people were already really pissed off. I think I blocked out the ass chewing and remember only the walk back to camp at K2.

The army personnel in front of their hq building were raising the flag. Due to terrible brain fart, my mind blanked and I had sudden trouble recalling the correct procedure regarding formal recognition of the flag.

One of them was a chick and she corrected me pretty harshly, shouting "You're supposed to stop!"

I was really embarrassed and not sure if I complied. One more notch on the belt of terrible days, lol.

[Naga_Fireball]

The water bottle incident and the Woah incident were hilarious near mishaps that happened at home base.

I think the water bottle incident happened when we were complying with an order requiring removal of navigator sextant from the flight deck and plugging up the hole formerly used by the navigator.

Well, my coworker Dave was up on the roof working on sealing the hole, as I recall. For whatever reason, I was down in the flight deck area. Our supervisor came into the hangar where we were working and was bored.

He talked me into this crazy prank involving me convincing Dave to lean over this porthole thing he was plugging and get squirted in the eye by my water bottle.

Unfortunately Dave listened to my request, and I giggled & squeezed the bottle probably 20x too hard. A flood of water poured down the access hatch and almost soaked our supervisor, who scuttled away to let me take the full fury of Dave, who considered this whole thing to be an NDE.


....




The Woah incident was Dave's revenge for the water bottle. We were reterminating wiring for fuel quantity capacitors on top of the wing. This was about 25 feet off the ground altho it didn't look like it really.

Dave had been to the bathroom or something and was returning to the worksite. The wing on a C130 is marked with black lines to show maintenance personnel where it is safe to walk, with particularly hazardous areas blocked off.

He figured out that I was very upset by his furious and fearful reaction to the water incident, that in fact I have a fear of heights and hadn't computed the fact that Dave could conceivably fall off the plane...

So Dave walks by and I say, "You're outside of thd black line". He turns around with these hilarious deadpan eyes, and starts doing these tiny psycho pinwheels with his wrists while saying repeatedly "Whoah", hm maybe five or ten times.

Well of course after a few revolutions and Woahs I'm close to pulling my hair out but also afraid that any sudden motion on my part will send Dave spinning off.

The section chief, on the other hand, had no such compunction. He came into the hangar like a raging bull, screaming at Dave to get back inside the black line.

Holy shit lol we both almost crapped our pants that time.

[Naga_Fireball]

"I thought you were Steve"

This was one that other people couldn't believe I did not think was a big deal.

So my shop, lmfao (!) Guidance and Control, often worked in tandem with Fuel cell shop. They had to take the doors n shit off the tanks and remove the foam etc. Sometimes we helped with various shit but mostly we just thanked them for doing the hard work so we coukd do the "Squirrel" work. . Lol

Well, I'm trying to remember. Ok yah, they are the Auxiliary tanks. The pods that hang between the engines of C130 are full of fuel!

Anyhow. These damn things come apart if I recall. At one point we had them exploded all over so that the wiring could be looked at. The foam was a pain in the freaking butt. Speaking of Pitas, getting to the point of our tale ..


I was up on one of those maintenance ladders in a blue coverall, one of those fuel resistant jobs. Only my ass was sticking out, and my boots.

Well this doddering old fart who worked in fuel shop, a harmless guy with a speech impediment named Al, came over and poked me in the ass with a piece of wire or something.

I didn't even feel it the first time so he did this sort of tickle tickle thing. Um lol so of course that time I backed up like 0-60 in 3 seconds and was totally shocked that it was Al.

Even funnier was the realization that he was shocked to see me.

"I thought you was Steve!!!!!!" Al finally says, his face scarlet.

People asked me about that one for a week. I felt so bad for Al but it was hilarious that they were such pranksters.

It reminds me of these two girls from high school who were just terrible, lmao. One of them ran into the teacher's office when me and this goodie 2 shoes were helping do busy work, and before the other gal could see who it was, the other one who had rushed in jammed her thumb in her friend's butt and scared the shit out of her.

What is it with people. Lol

Anyhow the I thought you were Steve thing was pretty funny.

[Naga_Fireball]

"Look to your Left, Look to your right"

Before I enlisted, maybe while I was in tech school actually, was when my unit did the hard work. They got stuck at some pretty bad bases during OEF/OIF etc. In the first years.

Anyhow some of the ladies n gents were cohabiting an army outpost, can't remember which. But there was some concern that perimeters would be breached and the air force personnel left defenseless.

Well. One of the majors stands up to give a speech during muster, so I am told.

He tells everyone "Look to your left! Now look to your right! One of those folks ain't going home."

It turned out to be a false alarm and a hard knock to his career.

[Naga_Fireball]

"It's not your fault they fucked it up"


Lunch time in the military can be stressful.

Charleston WV has a pretty nice shopping mall. This mall even has hair salons and stuff.

So one day I decided to spend actual money on a haircut AND highlights. With short hair I figured, nothing to lose, it will be cute, if they do it right i might squeak past regulations. .. etc.

Well $80 later I'm driving home all happy excited about work the next day.

I don't think to look at the back of my head.

Next day Dave is unable to prevent himself from commenting on the change. Around lunch time the comments had changed from curious to outright disapproval. Lol

Dave, exasperated with my inability to understand, finally states "the back of your head looks like a checkerboard".

The whole room goes quiet (there's 6 to 10 people listening to this go down) and he follows it up with,

"It's not your fault they fucked it up."


Room goes totally silent , then groans and ecstatic laughter.

[Naga_Fireball]

"It might have pushed you over the edge"

Some of the younger guys in our section were known for being total assholes a great deal of the time.

One of them had a notorious short temper that showed through because of a V shaped configuration of veins on his forehead that would pulse warningly when he got mad.

Lol

Well it was a common occurrence that we ordered lunch from this Chinese place called Main Kwong. Most of us knew which entree we liked most and were able to give the combo # to the person ordering and picking up lunch.

Mine was L17, general tsos chicken or something like that. For whatever reason i was actually working on the plane that day instead of doing the Chinese run.

I was about 5 min late for my lunch,everyone else was sitting down already.

With a sinking feeling I realize my lunch has been switched out for a tasteless mistake, someone else us eating my L17....


Turns out it's this kid we called The V because of the temper problem i mentioned.

He grins after a while as I'm pretending to enjoy the wrong lunch and he offers that he is the culprit.

Satan takes over for me at this point, and I fire back with,

"it's ok, this one tasted kind of queer and might have pushed you over the edge. "

You wouldn't believe how many eyes bugged out.

[Naga_Fireball]

"Red Ball!"


Those of you who remember Minority Report -- with the little brown and red wooden balls going down the chute at the police station -- will shudder to hear that in the Air Force mechanic culture, the term "Red ball" is used pretty often, to designate an unexpected problem that is grounding an aircraft attempting to take off...

Like if the engines are running and they are doing checklist to leave, and then your shop gets called, it's a Red Ball.

Anyhow most maintenance people have some version of a story where the flight crew is in the way of the system(s) needing repair!

My boss told me his story, trying to get an indicator out of the wall in front of the pilot, and pilot would not give up his seat for the technician.

Boss ended up touching a live wire or something and getting shocked hard. He was holding a screwdriver and his arm flew back, the point of his elbow hit the pilot between the eyes. He didn't tell me if they still flew the mission lol.


My red ball story is shorter and happened in Uzbekistan. Unfortunately as i was trying to access a similar instrument on the copilots side, also with a crew who were happy to be sitting, my thumb got sliced by the instrument wall when the connector on rear of indicator opened up suddenly.

Bright red arterial blood squirted just like a movie and splattered the right leg of the copilots flight suit.

I was so embarrassed.

@@

[Naga_Fireball]

"FRESH PAINT"

While stationed so briefly at K2, we younger troops were acquainted with some God awful instrument installations in and near the navigators table on a C130.

A middle aged and extremely small amd thin gentleman from another unit was showing me and this young kid also from a 3rd unit lol, how to replace, ughh i can't exactly remember the formal name,

But I think it's all the shit connected to the TAS true air speed gauge on the navigators wall. A horrible nightmare.
You have to climb back behind the freaking wall and reach like a monkey into a pitch black crack to access wiring and pneumatic lines.

There's a bladder thing and outside the plane i thought maybe a pitot tube or sensor, Christ I can't remember, sorry lol its been 10 years.

Anyhow, I wasn't told this at the beginning of the week we were working on this plane, but apparently one of the other shops took advantage of the opportunity and painted this thing just beautifully. It was a plane from another unit.

Oops.

Well me and this young fellow were not advanced enough to be trusted to repair this trouble instrument without help. So the old guy took it upon himself to do the hard part inside, and dispatched kid for parts and had me refit the hardware outside the fuselage.


As chance would have it , already in the doghouse for being a know nothing,
My screwdriver slipped spectacularly and I gouged the fresh paint all the way down to bright shiny aluminum alloy or whatever these birds are made of.

It was about a 6" scratch, the worst I'd ever seen, and I'd bet $100 a person couldn't do it on purpose and still accomplish the magnitude of damage that I did with 1 accidental sideways scrape.

It must have been a critical hit.

[Naga_Fireball]

SAM'S CLUB

This one isn't meant to be funny. Parts of it might be funny. But i think it's sad.

So when i enlisted, i toured two sections. GAC and the 2 shops attached to it, and Intel.

Unfortunately everyone in Intel seemed to hate life. So I asked to see the maintenance area. Lmao!

Most everyone was deployed. But the shop chief of GAC was there and gave me a tour. He was extremely knowledgeable but was twitchy as heck. Maybe like an ASD person would be if they are anxious to please and uncertain of their efficacy. I thought he was nice. Grey hair and sort of nervous eyes, very nice guy lol.

It turns out, he was nice as he could be. This guy moved up the next year to be section chief, and his boss went upstairs to do an administrative job.

Well, we still had to run the snack bar if people wanted snacks. This guy was the most business minded and also helpful individual in our area, so he got stuck at least the one time driving a truck to Sam's Club for our monthly roundup of things that people eat.

When we got near the highway and down off the hill where our airport was, I noticed a definite increase in the anxiety of this guy. He was having a sort of panic attack, but I noticed also that he was used to it, but maybe me being in the truck was making it worse.

I can't really describe it except, he was unable to hit the gas pedal without also hitting the brake within the next 3 seconds.

We had to go all the way from the Capitol to corridor G like that.

Lmfao! !!!



But looking back on my own driving history, I find this supervisor's self control to be very impressive considering my superior familiarity with the road, and the severity of his stress related to driving.


Unfortunately with ASD that part seems to get progressively worse as a person ages.