By Jim Jenkins
Aging Aircraft Public Affairs

Nearly 200 people were on hand at the latest Joint Service Wiring Action Group conference in Virginia Beach in early June, a record amount for the bi-annual, multi-service meeting of wiring artisans.

“This has, with out a doubt, been the most successful JSWAG to date,” said Ollie Muja, of the Aging Aircraft Integrated Product Team wiring team at Pax River. “Attendance has gone up a tremendous amount. The point of all this was to get the maintainers involved, to give them the understanding and the feeling that their voice can and needs to be heard.”

Aircraft wiring maintainers, engineers, logisticians, and program managers came from all over the country, from all the different services, from different countries and from as far away as the Pacific Rim to take part in this forum.

The JSWAG maintainers’ conference was established and chartered by the Naval Air Systems Command and the U.S. Air Force to collectively provide advancement in safety, reliability, maintainability and readiness of systems.

The JSWAG was started by a group at NAVAIR, originally called the Naval Air Vehicle Wiring Action Group (NAVWAG), in 1984 and matured into a forum for all the services.

For the young Sailor, Airman, Marine or Soldier aircraft maintainer, the conference reinforces training and provides insight to how problems are resolved, and highlights the importance of the one team, one fight mentality of JSWAG. For the seasoned maintainer, it’s the opportunity to pass on lessons learned and voice whatever concerns there may be so that the people with the power to solve these issues can. JSWAG is about sharing knowledge.

Issues at the forefront were the consolidation of the general series aircraft wiring maintenance manuals for all the services, narrowing down the maintenance requirements for selecting an automatic wiring analyzer, and resolving action items placed before the different committees convening at the JSWAG.

Training

“I’ve been pushing the wiring inspection training issue,” said Master Gunnery Sgt. Steven Vogt, Wiring Avionics Chief with the 1st Marine Air Wing in Okinawa, Japan. “I think it’s one of the areas where we have the potential of saving a lot of NAVAIR money teaching guys how to properly inspect wiring.”

Vogt said that he would like to see a regular wiring inspection each time the aircraft is down for normally schedule maintenance. This way properly trained maintainers can find potential problems during the normal maintenance cycle, thus not taking away from flight time.

Nancy Heisley, heading the training committee, concurs. Heisley, a supervisory logistics manager with NAVAIR, said the need for young maintenance professionals to be trained in wiring inspection techniques is great.

A recurring action item popping up at the JSWAG has been to make the training available to future maintainers at the Center of Naval Aviation Technical Training (CNATT) in Pensacola, Fla.

They need to know what tools to use, how and where to look behind wiring cable harnesses, what typically corrodes and the causes, and in general what causes damage to wiring systems. CNATT does not currently teach students wiring inspection techniques.

The current performance state demonstrates that more than 900,000 maintenance man-hours are allocated annually to aircraft wiring discrepancies across the Naval Aviation Enterprise, said Lt. Cmdr. Christian Stover with the CNATT Human Performance Center. Also Stover concludes that current performance state demonstrates that 1.4 safety mishaps occur annually on average as a result of aircraft wiring discrepancies.

“The Aging Aircraft IPT sponsored a Human Performance Improvement project that was chartered to conduct a root cause analysis on recurring performance issues resulting in decreased Aircraft Ready for Tasking (RFT) rates, increased safety mishaps, and excessive maintenance man-hours attributed to aircraft wiring discrepancies,” Stover said. “The Human Performance Detachment embedded within the Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training in Pensacola conducted the study and identified numerous root causes to include inadequate tools and testing equipment, inaccurate and outdated publications, training deficiencies, management and policy disparities, and documentation inaccuracies.”

Briefing the findings at the JSWAG helped spread the word and increase awareness to the problems, he said.

“AAIPT's sponsorship of the HPI project and JSWAG's subsequent involvement has played an integral role in significantly increasing awareness of aircraft wiring performance issues in the fleet and in implementation of recommendations that will ultimately enhance the performance of the Sailor and Marine on the flight deck,” Stover said.

Quality Parts

Another topic covered by a JSWAG committee was getting quality parts to fleet maintainers.

Rick Clarkson, head of the quality parts committee, works for the Wiring Systems Branch Qualified Parts Laboratory at NAVAIR where engineers qualify parts to outfit the fleet. Many companies supplying aircraft parts for the Navy’s aircraft fleet have the QPL perform the environmental and performance tests on the parts. If they pass, the parts are incorporated on the list and available for purchase by the fleet. The committee works with the fleet to address any issues they may be having with parts.

“Getting quality products out to the fleet was the biggest issue in this committee,” Clarkson said. “Many things come out if this meeting and the committee has grown because now the fleet has a place to go and bring wiring issues to higher-ups in NAVAIR who can actually do something about it.”

Other committees included: Maintenance, Design and Installation, and Data Collection. These groups work together efficiently to provide answers in order to improve flight safety, reliability, maintainability and readiness of systems throughout not only the Naval Aviation Enterprise, but also DoD. The next JSWAG will be meeting November 13 through 17 at the Virginia Beach Hotel and Conference Center. Visit www.afwireintegrity.com for more information.

Registration, nominations for the Lou Roberts award and a feedback form will be available on the Web site soon.