Vehicle Maintenance Facility and Firehouse Tour

Today I received a tour of the Vehicle Maintenance Facility, the Firehouse, and the Aerospace Ground Equipment facilities. All of these are my responsibility in my NSF role.

We were asked to wear lovely safety goggles as we toured the VMF. My OSO friends from NASA would have loved this tour. Wait until you see the tools rooms…..

Here’s where they are working in different vehicles in 8 bays. These first tractors are used in the traverse that hauls fuel to the South Pole.


Up close look at a traverse tractor. 


They just drive the vehicles right on in to the bay to get worked on.

There’s a parts department and a tools department. Each mechanic has to check out and back in with the toolset he’s given that day. Every tool is accounted for to make sure none get lost. 



Rows upon rows of tools….







This is the VMF Supervisor, Jonathon. He gave us the tour today, and we discussed the challenges his team and the facility are facing. Look at the size of the wrenches!!!



This is the machinist’s shop. He makes all sorts of necessary parts for not only the vehicles, but other needs around the station.


There is a welder onsite.



Next we visited the firehouse. They have two big fire trucks and two ambulances as well as smaller vehicles.




Captain Rhodes (left) and Chief Chandler (right) let me take their photo. The Chief is new this year, and we discussed challenges on his team. We’ve also discussed expectations and improvements. I’m going to really enjoy working with him.


We also toured the Aerospace Ground Equipment facility where we saw the heaters and generators needed to keep the planes running when they are here in the ice.

In the winter months, since it’s dark, they have to set up temporary lighting on the runway path. These are portable lights that they will set up. Winter flights are rare and only executed for emergency situations.

They have a whole warehouse of LC-130 spare parts. This is the ski used on the wheels so  the plane can land on snow/ice.

Comments

  1. Mae TravelsSeptember 27, 2022 at 5:34 AM

    The challenges of living in such an adverse climate really are made obvious when you describe all the preparations — this and also the tent and camp stove and what that means.

    best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

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