Moving tents eases with ingenuity
5/2/2005 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Airmen with the 386th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron used their ingenuity when they were asked to move a neighborhood of tents more than a mile.
“We did a similar job when we got here in January, and we got the job done, but it wasn’t very efficient,” said Senior Master Sgt. Kerry Roberts, 386th ECES structures superintendent.
......
But the job got several of the structures specialists thinking, said Tech. Sgt. Raymond Saunders who invented a “jig” that could be bolted to the top of the floor. After he came up with the design, structures troops Senior Airman Josh Gulick and Airman 1st Class David Krause welded and bolted the jig together.
Made from steel, the jig is screwed to the wooden floor joists. By securing the jig to the floor, they move the floor and the tents. With the bolts evenly distributed among the joists, the forklift simply picks up the jig by its “handle” and the whole tent moves in one piece.