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Engineers work together to solve problems at Kandahar

  • Published
  • By Maj. David Kurle
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (AFPN) --  Airmen deployed all over the world overcome obstacles every day in order to get the mission done. In southwestern Afghanistan, two of those Airmen collaborated to build radio-communication antennas.

When the Washington Air National Guard's 215th Engineering Installation Squadron arrived here in May, its task was to install new UHF and VHF radio antennas. After taking inventory of the parts that were delivered and what they needed to do, the engineers found they had no way to mount the antennas to the poles.

That's when Master Sgt. Curtis Conner, the 215th EIS team chief, turned to Master Sgt. Frank Swygert of the 451st Expeditionary Civil Engineer Flight.

"Basically he came and said, ‘We have a problem,'" Sergeant Swygert said. "They had antennas to put up but no mounting hardware, which no one realized until the stuff arrived."

The cross-arms to hold the antennas and the braces to keep them stable were also missing.

The 451st ECEF is tasked with airfield support. It's not manned or equipped for base support, which includes building structures, and certainly not for building mounts for radio antennas.

The first challenge was to find metal the team could use to fabricate parts for the antennas. At Kandahar, the exact parts needed for the project were not available. Relying on the supply system would take time they didn't have.

"We realized the situation they were in, because we weren't much better off ourselves," said Sergeant Swygert, who is deployed from Dover Air Force Base, Del. "About the time we were ready to give up we came up with an idea."

Sergeant Conner scoured the base for parts they would need to build the mounts, crossbars and braces.

"One of our missing pieces was a water pipe found alongside the road," Sergeant Conner said. "Through modification and ingenuity, we were able to make it work because parts and hardware on this installation are hard to come by."

The next obstacle was the lack of welding equipment. However, the CE flight did have an acetylene torch designed to cut metal.

Sergeant Swygert relied on his experience as a former civil engineer instructor and came up with a plan involving a technique called oxyacetylene, or gas welding.

"Most people have not gas-welded since they left tech school," Sergeant Swygert said. "To be honest, if I hadn't just (been) an instructor, we may not have even considered it."
So using a piece of equipment designed to cut metal, rather than welding it together, the civil engineers went to work fabricating the hardware.

Capt. Matt Altman, commander of the 451st ECEF, said he is proud of the work his team has done.

"They really have adapted and gotten creative in overcoming a lack of parts," he said. "There's something about this environment. Troops just take whatever they've got and get the job done."