 I'm Corporal Aaron Lucas. My hometown is Sulphur Springs, Texas and my job description is CH-53 Echo Crew Chief. I didn't really know what I wanted to do after high school. I didn't want to go to college yet and I felt like the Marine Corps could help me build some confidence and then once I got the CH-53 or the air crew contract it was a done deal so I joined. I've been with 464 since January of this year. Day to day we show up at about like six in the morning to drop boxes and get ATAF. After that we do a FOD walk to make sure there's no FOD for an object debris on the airfield. Once that's over with we go back to our individual shops and get kicked off to our individual jobs and then at the end of the day we'll come back in ATAF again and then plan for the next day. ATAF is in all tools accounted for so we make sure that everything that we bring out to our jobs is also brought back in so that they can't damage the aircraft. When I got to my school house I didn't really know what anything about platforms but when I heard about the Echo it seemed like the most versatile aircraft on the out of the options and then I ended up getting a contract for that and only that so it kind of worked out but I wanted echoes out of all of them so I'm happy. Benefits us by letting us deal with extreme kind of situations. Our squadron benefits from having to maintain a steady schedule of flying nights and days consistently so the maintainers can get a good practice of coming out here every day and working on fewer aircraft than we're used to and also getting them ready for the night goes by any means necessary as long as it's safe and we get to work with Marsock too and do cooperations at night so it's good for everyone crew chiefs and mechs alike. Well at the end of the day that's what we're supposed to do I mean we can go out and find familiarization flights by ourselves all day but at the end of the day I feel like our job is to pick up Marine Corps like infantry units and stuff like that cargo and take them where they need to be so we can't do that without like infantry or you know any other units that we move around so it's extremely important in my eyes. The Echo is really versatile we can our main purpose is taking on groups of people and then dropping them off in hostile environments quick and fast and easy. We can defend ourselves with our GAL-21s and we're very maneuverable in extreme situations so we can be somewhere and not be there very quickly and then we can also externally lift cargo if need be to help them with any of their extra stuff that they need moved around. Since coming to Raven I've got to shoot the GAL-21 and operate that a few times so definitely increase my resourcefulness on that and I've also got to take it on packs more often we don't get to do that much as home so getting able to get experience with packs on my bird and especially guys like Marsock and having extreme like missions with them it really helps build my confidence to be able to do something like that when the time comes if it should come. Mission accomplishment I feel like the crew chiefs are one of the most important jobs for everyone I mean obviously maintainers fix the birds but we're right in that boat we're maintainers too and then when the birds go out we're we're like the voice in the back of the pilot's head reassuring them that things are okay because they're doing a lot of stuff up front they're trying to see a lot of stuff and in the back we're we're just backing them up on everything calls troops we're responsible for getting Marsock in the back of the helicopter and out of it and also getting them into zones safely and should there be a threat it's our job to neutralize them or suppress them from the Marsock guys so I feel like crew chiefs are really important for this exercise. At New River you get really used to the environment around there you'll do terrain flight routes that you do every single day so it's not really a surprise and not just getting used to like the environment over there but you're not really doing anything new so you're not getting better versus going out to like say a place like SLTE in California in 29 Palms where you're landing with like dust and sand coming up it's a completely different environment like not everywhere in the world looks like Jacksonville North Carolina so it's good to get out here and get like different looks at different environments for how we fly out here. Mainly what I've seen a lot is the trees they're really like different they go up and down like waves almost so it's weird when you're going in a turf environment and you're watching these trees come up and down you really have to be on your toes for the pilots if they're getting too low and there's a lot of cool zones around here with lots of landmarks so it helps with navigation a lot and we get to practice stuff like that and most of the zones are really different there's lots of weird trees and stuff for us to practice on landing and having our CRM up with that so it's it's good it's just new zones that we've never seen before so we get to practice with them. Well at the end of the day if you're coming into the zone with guys and the enemy attacks you it's your job to suppress so if you can't load your weapon or do the procedures for the gow when it messes up at the end of the day your liability to your crew and everyone on that helicopter so I feel like it's one of the most important things for a crew chief to know how the gow works and how to fix it if it breaks in flight. When we're coming into the zone we want to be in and out of there pretty quick we're a really big helicopter but we're not a lot more maneuverable than most people think so if we can get into a zone without the enemy knowing what's going on we can be in and out of there before they realize what's happening all the better so we practice that we come in pretty fast we land quick and we get our guys off quick so we can get out of there and then same if we're coming back to pick them up