Portland Air National Guard Tour

For our joint activity Wednesday night we took the youth to The Portland Air National Guard. Thanks to Bro. Haner having connections and hooking us up. What an experience to get to go inside the hangars and see where they work on the engines that power the F-15's. We learned that each of the engines are valued at an estimated $1.2 million dollars. And there are 2 engines on each F-15. Oh my!!!Our tour was guided by Master Sergeant Brockman. He went into detail of the genetics of the engines and the power each one has.
Our Young Women and Young Men were very intuitive and asked alot of questions.
We were going to be going out on the Tarmac and the temperature outside was about 44 degrees so we had the youth bring jackets to stay warm. Well we were in the hangars for awhile first so they began to shed their layers and of course when they do this they want someone else to hold their stuff. Being that Myself and Jo-Lynn, my 1st councilor had kids there naturally they come to us to dump their stuff off with. Jo-Lynn's daughter was first to bring her heavy coat for her mommy to hold. After about 10 minutes Jo-Lynn commented on how heavy it was and I stated how my daughter brought her large bag in and was surprised she hadn't asked me to hold it yet. I look over at her and she does not have her bag. Puzzled I began to look around to see where she put it.

This is where I found it. She had asked the YM's President Jared Mueller to hold it for her. He even posed for a picture. What a nice guy and a good sport.
Next we got to go out on the Flight Line to watch 3 of the F-15's take off.

Master Sergeant Brockman gave each person ear plugs and off we went.

We got to see how they do all of the routine checks on the jets before they go up. They spare no little detail.

Maddy out on the tarmac waiting to see them take off.

Sierra, Macie, Maddy (in the background is Nick and Travis)

We also got to see the cockpit of the F-15

What an amazing piece of equipment, everything at the fingertip of the pilot. The F-15 carries 30,000 lbs of fuel. Shoots rounds of 940 bullets in less than 10 seconds and the bullets weigh approximately 1 lb. each. We were given so much information in such a short amount of time that I cannot remember all of it.

The only picture that I have gotten of Cole in forever. This guy just won't let me take his picture.

Macie, Sierra and Maddy in the Hangar
Our Group...

from front left: Caleb, Lance, Laurissa, Maddy, Me & Heidi

2nd row: Morgan, Brianna, Travis, Nick, Madison, Madison, Macie, Sierra, Jo-Lynn, Kiara

top row: Bishop McGill, Cole, Jeremy Frey, Master Sergeant Brockman, Don Haner, Jared Mueller, Kelvin Brown & Cavan Dover

Thanks again to Don Haner for arranging this tour. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.