Helping the Air Force save thousands

A maintenance unit at Robins Air Force Base is helping the Air Force save thousands of dollars.

The 567th Electronics Maintenance Squadron can now repair parts used in the Combined Altitude Radar Altimeter, or CARA, in house.

CARA is a critical system used on many Air Force aircraft. It not only measures altitude, or the aircraft’s distance from the terrain, it also allows aircraft to fly at low levels to get in and out of hostile combat situations.

The 567 EMXS was able to formulate a cost-effective troubleshooting and repair procedure for the dual supplies used in the CARA system.

They developed a way to ensure the parts needed to make the repairs could be maintained in-house.

“We manufactured our own interface cables that allowed us to remove the power supplies and access individual circuits. This in turn allows us to probe the circuitry to gather information for troubleshooting and repair,” said Vic Brookshire, 567th EMXS electronics integrated systems mechanic.

Through research, trial and error, the 567th EMXS was able to replace several electronic test boxes with the CARA flight line test set. This eliminated several steps and thousands of dollars were saved in procurement cost and maintenance of test equipment.

“There were eight different stages we had on the initial work bench with different pieces of equipment,” said Ditwan Meadows, 567th EMXS electronics integrated systems technician. “Now we have a setup that allows us to troubleshoot the power supply, fix it right here at Robins and put it back into the supply chain.”

The technical order that was developed by the team can be easily followed, and has essentially created a new organic workload at Robins.

Thousands of dollars have been saved to date on the CARA line, and millions more will be saved over the lifetime of the system.

HHJ News