Members of the CIRF travel to Syracuse for tooling

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Chasity Johnson
  • 183rd Public Affairs
ABRAHAM LINCOLN CAPITAL AIRPORT, Illinois --  Members of the 183rd Fighter Wing Centralized Intermediate Repair Facility, also known as the "CIRF" traveled March 14 to Syracuse to retrieve engine-repair tooling.

Because the 174th Fighter Wing will no longer house F-16s, the National Guard Bureau slotted the 183rd to convoy to Syracuse to acquire the tooling.

What does the tooling mean for the members of the CIRF? It means the ability to work more efficiently.

"It will allow us to do any work we need without worrying about our tools breaking," said Tech. Sgt. Carl Hasselbring, 183rd Fighter Wing Propulsion Shop work leader. "It allows us to work on engines while allowing people to train at the same time."

The mission took six days for Master Sgts. Robert Force, Leo Leonhard, Richard Hand; Tech. Sgts. Jay Eilerman, David Estep, Carl Hasselbring, Kevin Roodhouse; Staff Sgt. Zackery Patterson; and Senior Airman Eric Roth to accomplish; two days to drive there, two days to load the equipment and two days to travel back. They traveled in three semi-trailer trucks and one van.

According to Tech. Sgt. Hasselbring, members of the 174th were very accommodating and easy to work with. "They had everything organized for us which made loading the equipment much easier."

Tech. Sgt. Hasselbring said he gained more from the trip than the tools. He said it afforded him the opportunity to bond with members of the 183rd that he rarely interacted with on base.

Although the trip possessed benefits beyond gaining the tools, it was not without incidence. While returning, the engine light in one of the semi-trailer trucks turned on. They were forced to leave the truck in Freeman, Ind., but they were able to recover it days later while on another convoy to Fort Wayne, Ind.

According to Tech. Sgt. Hasselbring, the incident did not negate from the importance of this mission.

"Retrieving this tooling is beneficial to our mission," said Tech. Sgt. Hasselbring. "If we don't have the tooling, we can't work on the engines. The workload we have now is 10 times greater than what we had before, so this tooling is going to be used more and more every day."