Cover Your Tails

Workers at Westover ARB, Mass., are constructing a $4.2 million mobile enclosure large enough to shelter a C-5 transport’s tail while the airplane is parked in the base’s smaller sized isochronal inspection hangar. The base is home to Air Force Reserve Command’s 439th Airlift Wing. The new structure will allow inspectors to work on the C-5 in that hangar in all weather, according to Westover’s Oct. 1 report. “This will enable us to continually become more efficient and better suited to withstand New England’s notoriously cold winters,” said MSgt. Jeffrey Schillawski, regional ISO shift supervisor with the 439th Maintenance Squadron. Until the mobile enclosure is completed sometime next spring, maintainers will continue to conduct regular tip-to-toe C-5 inspections in the base’s larger pull-through hangar. Since Westover began C-5 ISO inspections in 2006, base technicians have reduced processing time from 50 days to a mere 16, states the release. (Westover report by SrA. Alexander Brown)