By AD3 Rebecca Romo
matter of minutes, a crowd—including the CO—had gathered around the hangar bay or the mechs of VAW-123, the day started staring at the FOD. out like any other. We were between The prop system in the work-up detachments for our January combat Hawkeye community leaves little deployment, so the maintenance department was room for error. If contaminated taking advantage of the lull in flight operations and focused on the 400/800 hour inspections that had come or leaking, a failed pump housing system can prevent the due for aircraft 602. When the division LPO returned from the morning maintenance meeting, he told us that prop from feathering, which incorporating a technical directive (TD) was our No. 1 may in turn prevent the plane priority. We had to do the one that applied to the 602’s from landing safely. Since the introduction of the new, eightpropeller pump housing. We gathered all of our tools and publications for the bladed prop system in 2004, unfeathered propellers have been day, conducted a QA brief to make sure that everyone involved in two major mishaps was on the same page, and headed out to the hangar to start the job on aircraft 602. The TD required us to and have been the subject of remove the entire propeller assembly from the port side several community hazreps. of the aircraft. Although this was no small job, removing the propeller assembly was something that the power plant work center had done quite often. The initial removal of the prop assembly went smoothly, and it was soon laid out on the deck. As I removed the rear cover of the pump housing to replace a seal, I saw a unique piece of FOD: a razor blade sitting at the bottom of the housing. Our mechs hadn’t opened this housing before. I halted the work on 602 and grabbed my supervisor. He then went to Maintenance Control and QA division to tell them about the find. Within a
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Mech Mech
