So not great thenā¦
Sounds like management needs a shake up or restructure
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Yup. Listening to my boss talk about the āgood 'ole daysā, I guess around ~5 years ago everything changed and got much much worse, the bean counters took over and run everything now.
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THIS cool?
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Pretty much, yeah, 'cept itās a larger vehicle. No flamethrower (unless something goes horribly wrong), but we do get to spray 180C+ degree fluids all over stuff.
Cockpit:
That 3rd joystick in the upper left gets mounted between the knees and drives the truck from the cockpit.
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Hahaha fuck yeaā¦. I used to do thatā¦ single man operation is fun
I only skimmed the big postā¦ just saw a very familiar visual Iāll back and read now
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Weāre doing 100% single-op in Aspen, itās been a blast so far as long as you donāt mind 70+ hour weeks 
3 deicers last season, we need more people and trucks.
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Yea I remember that de-icer life
I did a few years at dtw with IDS, taking a wild guess itās the same company
Ours was a bit worse because our main pad was difficult to drive toā¦ I donāt remember but I think you had to cross a runway? Only been a decade
We jokingly called it the fortress of solitudeā¦ we could only drive in or out every few hours
We had no internetā¦ a deck of cardsā¦ a tv and exactly 1 dvd of the movie āblowā we watched it so much that I have someone past memorized and gone to blocked it out and donāt remember it
My last winter with them, was a mild winterā¦ so it hovered in the middle 30s for weeksā¦ and we had contractual obligation to have full staff if within 10 degrees of freezing
we were a much bigger stationā¦ probably 20? vehicles and 35 people at any given timeā¦ didnāt do single man operation unless you managed to sweet talk someone
Our main pad was 5 across 3 deepā¦ we did a shit Ton of CRJs and Saab 340s
Had a CRJ taxi into my truck while I was in the boom one yearā¦ that was a thingā¦ pilot error heard wrong radio trafficā¦ wrecked his wingletā¦ and I shit you not, he blew the slide to come out and inspect ā¦ gas on a fire
I donāt miss the bare hand tactile checksā¦
Your hands soak up the glycol and look great for the first weekā¦ then age and feel soggy the rest of the season
Manā¦ so many sketchy memoriesā¦ good
Times lol
That time there was a some kind of wire loose my cabs left right swivel jointā¦ and it was sparkingā¦ activelyā¦ and before we could even assess, heard a knock on my windowā¦ fuel guy nozzle in hand to fill up my cabs heaterā¦ 
ā¦ sir please go away from the sparky sparks with your nozzle of devil piss
Thereās zero chance he didnāt notice the sparks and decided he some come top me up anyways
Fuel guys are a species their own, people make the cliche jokeā¦ but I have seen them smoking in their truck 
Had a cab auto leveler go out when at max elevation, had to bring the arm in without leveler function with fixed rotationā¦ my windshield was parallel to the ground when I got to the bottomā¦ my ass has -never* puckered so hard
Pilots getting themselves grounded because they new better than us, and wouldnāt shut down apuā¦ and fluid making its way into the intakeā¦ or the Saab guys not wanting to do (I forget the operation name) 1 prop/wing at a timeā¦ and trusting that their battery had enough juice to restartā¦ spoiler it didnāt and it took hours to get them jumped lol, poor passengers
āChecking the tire pressureā of the tire out of eyesight with the pad tower during a rush 
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Yeah, IDS. I worked at MSP the year before, here in Aspen last season + this one.
All CRJ-700ās here, and pretty much everything imaginable has gone wrong at one point or another during an event, including all 3 trucks running out of fluid, only 1 truckās burner working, cab starting on fire etc.
Had some Benny Hill moments, only 1 truckās burner working but itās type4 wouldnāt spray. So truck 1 deiced, truck 2 anti-iced. Around and around, plane after plane for the whole day.
Canāt check the tire pressure, we have cameras everywhere and OPS constantly driving past. The Aspen airportās Deice pad is also inbound and outbound staging/run-up area for ~150 flights a day so things get interesting. First flight 7AM, last flight 10:30PM and we get 37 commercial flights a day.
Have to drive past the commercial ramps, plus private parking area, thereās only 1 road and 1 taxiway so it can take an hour+ just to go get fuel/fluids on a busy day. We usually end up single-trucking a plane while another 1 or 2 go to refill.
Oh, and did I mention our only mechanic would always call in sick every time it snowed and/or got cold? For a company thatās whole business model is based on cold/snow days.
Still had fun though. Even got to spray the Patriots plane after they lost a game to the Vikings at Minnesota a couple years ago.
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Haha
We never really had a ālast flightā
We got ānext flight is 2 hoursā
Dtw is 1100 flights a day
I think the blizzards we were jamming, 5 slots wide 2 truck operations weād probably do 30 an hour 
Having to drive to fill tanks sounds dumb
We had storage right on our pad
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Yeah, MSP was huge too.
Aspen is a different beast, lots of restrictions because of the mountains. Tower opens at 7AM, no flights before then.
Planes can still land after 10:30, but planes must be wheels up by 10:30:00 or else they canāt take off. FAA rules up here.
37 flights a day doesnāt sound like much (it isnāt), until you also figure in 3 deicers total on a 13+ hour shift 7 days a week. And those 37 flights are mixed in with 130+ private flights. And the ~150 inbound flights. And all of them usually end up touching our deice pad at one point or another.
Itās made to fit 3 CRJ-700ās. But weāve had 3 parked there, plus 2 we were deicing at one point. I was actually sitting in the travel lane/safety zone while deicing the tail (which was hanging over the safety zone) because it was so damn full.
Itās a tiny airport, but stupid busy because of a shitty layout.
Top is north, bottom is south. Commercial has to take off to the north, and land south. Weāve had it so windy, there were so many jets lined up waiting to take off it was blocking entrance to the deice pad so we couldnāt get anything else in to spray.
Empty pad:
Full pad:
edit: plane behind me we finished, they working on that one in front of me, and the other 3 jets are waiting for a slot to open up at the terminal to go unload passengers. Which they canāt, because the two weāre working on have to take off to make room for some to leave the terminal for deicing.
Bonus rainbow:
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Normally, youād want to take off and land with a headwind. And if you have relatively normal weather, most planes should be taking off and landing in the same direction.
I imagine that this is at KASE, and youāve got a bit of a crosswind right now:
METAR KASE 011253Z 21008KT 10SM CLR 09/00 A3049 RMK AO2 SLP214 T00890000
I guess that runway 15 is currently active?
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Yuppers, 15 is southbound so thatās the landing direction. Runway 33 is northbound. Same runway, different direction. Privates can takeoff/land either direction, they just have to get the OK from Tower. Commercial canāt due to FAA regulations because of the mountains.
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Does anyone have a photo of a flexM1 v2 closeup?
A useless bit of info for people that donāt know but might care.
-
Runways are numbered from a compass heading with 0ā° removed
eg 150ā°- 330ā°
(Rounded to the nearest 10ā°) -
So runways are numbered from 1 to 36
-
Opposite end of the runway always differ by 180 degrees / Ā±18
eg. 15 - 33
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My mother (in her 80ās) still lives on the farm. Sheās one of those nothing is gonna hold me back kind of people. From generations of farmers.
Just to let you know how that works, I got a text a few years back, āI ran over the propane tank with the tractor, but itās o.k.ā For reference, I had no clue what āitās o.k.ā meant, and she drove an Allis 7060 over a 500 gallon propane tank.
Anywho, I bring this up cause last year she decided she wanted the house painted and she wants it done her way. So she bought a goverment surplus de-icer. A.K.A. āThe Beastā
I spent last Christmas fixing the Hydraulics and bucket controls. God only know how this plays out, but at least sheās not planning to go up in it herself.
Just to clarify, the massive spray rig will not be used. Itās just to run some poor guy who didnāt run fast enough away from the project 30 ft up in the air with a paintbrush.
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Also useful in case that tractor gets any funny ideas about running over propane tanks againā¦
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She sounds cool as fuck.
And hilarious
Thats the opposite of overkillā¦
Thats like strapping somebody to the front of a ride on mower with a pair of scissors
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I can get you one Wednesday, if you donāt mind waiting : )
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Yes please!
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