 Well, the role of the mass liaison officer is referred to as the MLO, is operations. So it's logistics. What we do is we're here in support of the military and the mass units. So we, I interface with the mission commander. So there's a mission commander on the military side and there's a mass liaison officer on the agency or state side. Well, the objective of the training is initially we need to do currency exercises. It's required on the military side that they do this with their pilots annually. And then on the state and agency side it's required two to three times or every two to three years for different people. And what we want to do is really create that symbionic relationship between the MLO and the mission commander and the ramp, the pilots and navigators and the ramp personnel, the Mabums when they're filling those planes and things like that. It's a very dangerous mission. By the time mass is requested assistance, generally speaking, we are in a situation where resources are running thin, fires especially in the southwest and the west coast here. They've been astronomical the past few years and it's all over the news. And so mass has been asked to engage and when we're doing that, there's no time for that relationship building, how to speak to one another. Because think about it, you're military and you're civilians and you have your own language and we have ours. And even though we're all in firefighting, we're all fighting the same fire, there are different modalities. We have people on the ground and then of course you've got people in the air. For me, for this year's training, I am actually here. I am the mass liaison officer trainee. So I have been with the mass program for 15 years and when I joined I didn't have any firefighter experience, I didn't have any military background. So it took me a while to learn how to work with the military, some of the language and how to work with fire and how that works. So what I'm hoping to get out of this experience is to really improve on those skill sets. Once you've been around for quite a while, I'm very familiar with how things work. However, when you're making those decisions, some of those decisions, they don't pop up all the time and I'm really hoping that I can engage more with my executive leadership so that I have the opportunity to come back out and fulfill this role during an activation. It's real exciting to see the planes and the pilot and the retardant and that's the money shot. That's fabulous. But there is a lot of work that goes into behind the scenes, the operation, the logistics, the finance, pulling all of these people together, lodging, getting them here and things like that. So the mobilization and I think it's not nearly as exciting as watching that retardant drop or we're not the heroes in that cockpit but without these people that are behind the scenes managing and fulfilling all of these other ancillary slots in support of this mission, this wouldn't happen. So I really want to emphasize how important that is. I work at Fox Tanker Base. I've been there for about, let's say seven years now, started out actually working for Foscheck for three years and then been on the Angeles for four years. All duties are just loading tankers, primarily working on the ramp or in the timekeeper box but overall just tanker-based operations, qualified managers so I can do a bit of it all for right now. Day-to-day basis, during operations, making sure the ramp is clear of fod, making sure the tankers, air support, lead planes, air attacks are all situated and ready to go, maintaining or delegating morning briefings, get that going for the morning and overall just seeing what the fire needs and what our operation will look like. Out here for MAFs, we're out here parking tankers or parking the MAFs, loading MAFs, working with the air compressor, that's something new I haven't had to do yet but overall just being ground support for them so they can get their training and we can get our training and overall having a good day. Got a chance to work with the MAFs guys, got a chance to work with BLM, Forest Services here as well, Cal Fire, overall the interaction has been seamless, it seems like we've all been trained pretty well and we just mesh right away, everyone knows what they're doing and plugs their way in where they need to be and so far it's been pretty good. Definitely having this training and already kind of getting a baseline on how the operation goes now so in the future just getting that integration will be that much easier and that much more cohesive. Oh yeah, definitely get on board, definitely try and sign up on the list and get out here. It's good training and good exposure, even if you're at bases that don't take MAFs, you never know, you might go to a base that can and it's just that much better, that much more training to be prepared and yeah, really good. Our interactions with other units have been good, whenever someone needs some super easy to go walk over to either Wyoming or California, ask for a tool or maybe another hand to help out, yeah there's a lot of knowledge sharing and networking that goes on. We have people that work both civilian or full-time out here so there's a lot of piggybacking on ideas and showing each other different ways of doing things and obviously we have the Jays out here as well so they have some different knowledge on things that we don't and we have different knowledge that they don't so helping each other out really comes into play. Yeah the civilian agencies out here always are really nice, you know, there's a lot of camaraderie, a lot of them are ex-militarians, even the ones that aren't, they're kind of used to doing the program so helping they help us with the MAFs unit obviously and they've always been really great, they helped us put one on the first day we were here when we were having a little problems with it so they're very useful. Day to day we take care of the just the airplane so we'll open it up in the morning, make sure it's all ready for the air crew to go, end of the night we'll shut it down, do little pre-flights and any inspections that are required, besides that if the crew might call us up to inspect something that might not be working correctly, maybe help them with a little fixing the switches or button pressing and if not that we can change components and make sure it's ready to go for the next flight. The training helps both us and it's mostly for the pilots obviously to make sure they're up on their yearly but it helps us, we have a lot of new guys out here kind of getting the gist of what we do and understanding our day to day so when they're ready to come and do it themselves we can feel a little more comfortable sending the newer guys, they have a little more of a look of what it's going to be every day. I think it's just good to let everyone know that there's really a joint process out here, there are a lot of different moving parts and you know obviously we have guys from ops, guys from maintenance, we have PA, everyone's doing their part to you know come support this and show the community what we're out here doing so I think it's a really good opportunity for everyone. So my role here for MAFs is anything that the MAFs team needs to be loaded onto an aircraft, that's pretty much my role so like for example we just loaded the whole MAFs unit a couple days ago when they first got here and that was really cool. We got the set up chalk and all those things. There's a ton of officers that came here and it was really cool to get all their knowledge, talking about MAFs because I've never done it so it was really cool for them to explain the process of what happens in the sky and then it's pretty cool to see it because when they fly we know that we loaded it so and it was pretty rewarding in my opinion. Working with like my supervisors because the leadership in aerial port is pretty good I was surprised like to come here and to have all of the sergeants just be so knowledgeable and to keep us on track because there's a lot of stuff that we don't know yet just coming back so I think that was like the biggest takeaway how knowledgeable they were about MAFs. I love the camaraderie here it is like I've been talking with officers all day it's pretty cool I met some ones from Wyoming, Nevada it's pretty cool we all they all come together here and like when they find something to get done like there's so many people working on it it gets done super quick. Okay my role here is to provide communications and support for the MAF units so I'm more responsible for providing the frequencies and making sure everybody on the ramp and on the planes have the right frequencies and they can talk to each other. My role here is very important because of communications everybody needs to talk so I make sure that when they do need to talk they are able to talk on the radios and they have the right frequencies to do it. I've been doing this for about 28 years in my professionals series but actually with MAFs I've been doing this for about 10 to 11 years I believe. When we come to MAFs we work with other agency partners too it's just not the military we actually you know whoever needs radios whether it be a contractor or a Forest Service BLM we actually provide them the radios that they need to support their job out in the field. Well the setup takes takes a while because we need to find out who's coming how many folks are going to be showing up so we're prepared on how many radios we need to support it and also to actually bring folks in to help and help do the training. You know I feel great I feel that you know truly this is an interagency organization where it come here and it doesn't matter who you are who you're from we actually come here and do one job and do it good so. A role for the crew chiefs out here at MAFs we are basically the caretakers of the airplane. Anytime the airplane needs to be serviced put fuel on it we're the ones who will do that. My role for as a crew chief for the MAFs mission basically we are the maintainers of the aircraft once ops comes back from their missions we'll put fuel on them and also service the aircraft and just do general inspections make sure their planes good to go for the next day we'll stay late if we have to get everything done make sure the aircraft is perfect and ready to fly. This is my first MAFs mission I'm very new out here but I got the opportunity to come up as a new person and get to see I guess just something that's high-paced having to go go go stay long hours and work really hard but overall I'd say the experience been really good I've been learning a lot I love it out here. Yes the other units that we've been working with have been very helpful the camaraderie's there of one big thing we've been doing is training patches around so one of the Wyoming guys they they said all the high roller patch looked cool and so I said all right we'll swap and so I guess I'll add this to the wall when I get back. One big takeaway was expecting anything to happen there was a night where an aircraft came back and there was a unforeseen hydraulic issue that we had to tackle and we ended up having to work with the hydro shop together and get that solided so the next day the airplane was good to go. The experience with working with another unit was definitely very great for us it shows that we can always trust on others not who aren't even in your unit to help us out. If we needed a question or help with something they could always come and help us and vice versa. Right now we're learning how to operate the MAFs units and how to work with the military folks to their standard so basically meshing what we do together. They're out here it's basically a drill for them but for us it's initial me for initial training how to work the MAFs unit everything from the compressor how to park the aircraft the way they operate. If MAF gets activated it helps me able to function anywhere in the country. Anywhere MAFs goes I could go and assist. My big takeaway from this is everything from networking to speaking with other folks and learning about their bases and how they operate with learning with the cooperators which is military so having that knowledge that you're able to be activated and go anywhere the air guard goes to help support their mission. I feel confident that I'll be able to perform my duties at the highest ability because of the training here today. I actually just want to thank everybody. Thank everybody for for making making this training what it is bringing their knowledge to the table and helping me a civilian learn how the Air Force operates their their air guard units and how we work together. Just just a big thanks to everybody.