On The Road Again

The Other day I had the opportunity to go on a road trip up to Sacramento to work on a broken plane. Me and the mechanic I went with got all the stuff together: parts for an engine bleed problem, tools, flashlights and batteries, and a full tank of gas for the Chevy pickup we use for our road trips. We got some cash for the toll on the bridge we have to cross and hurried to hit the road. Everything was going well for about 2 miles. Once we got on the highway we were in bumper to bumper traffic.

It takes about 2 hours to drive from Oakland to Sacramento on a normal day, however, we took about 3 hours and a few minutes to get there. There are mechanics in Sacramento but usually only one mechanic is there at a time and as such they require assistance when airplanes get grounded there. Sure one guy can handle the normal gate calls of the day and maybe an occasional tire change, maybe even a hydraulic pump change, but items like engine work or window changes require more than one mechanic.

Once we arrived we called the on shift mechanic and he escorted us to their shop. Coming from Oakland with all our space I was taken aback by the size of the maintenance office in Sacramento. I had been to Sacramento to work planes before but not since the company stationed four mechanics there. They have a small office but it has all the necessary equipment: refrigerator, computer, desk, phone, small TV, lockers, and a place to sit down. I would say it is about perfect for one guy at a time as is the norm there. The mechanic on duty was an old Oakland co-worker so we sat down and caught up on things, he explained the engine problem to us and we headed out to check out the plane. Before we could get to the door a call came over and he had to go check something out on another plane. We waited for him to come back and then got to the grounded airplane. While we were working on the plane something like four or five more calls came in that the on duty mechanic had to check out.

We tinkered and checked some stuff and eventually decided that one of the bleed air lines must be leaking. When we finally got around to removing the suspect line we closed up the cowls and got ready to take her out and high power run her. Well, gone are the days of simply hopping in the plane and taxiing to the run up hole to see if we had once more done our magic. First we had to go to the shop and fill out our taxi paperwork, printout the airport maps, fax the paperwork to maintenance control and do the hoky-poky. Of course this whole ordeal which should take about 20 minutes tops is made even longer by the incoming gate calls which our host had to attend to. It was crazy, it seemed like every time we were ready to go, another call would come over. This had to take almost an hour and to be fair it was right around terminating time and the crews wanted to discuss their issues with a mechanic.

We get to the plane and call the ramp over to pull the chocks and belt loader away so that we could taxi out. Amazing the rampers there are very polite and willing to work, a huge contrast to our rampers in Oakland. Our host was taxiing and I was on the radio. We went to the run-up hole and set our N1 tachs, ran her up to take off on the suspected engine and about 77-80% on the other. We did our checks, checked our checks, and rechecked that the checks we checked were checked (you mechanics out there know what I mean). Everything was fine. We taxi back to the remote spot and button her up, head back to the maintenance office.

As we are enjoying a refreshing drink the radio and phone start up again requiring the on duty mechanic to head out and get things handled. I tell you it was exhausting to watch him go out over and over again. We decided to bail while we had the chance or risk being sucked into the gravitational pull of the needy pilots in Sacramento that particular day. Small stations are cool but it seemed to me, at least that day, they keep you humping. Maybe it was a junior pilot day, but that's a subject for another time.