Practice With the Winch

We had labs all of Thursday and today. The one I had yesterday with Trimpe and Hibbard, we had a pressurized pawl (stopper-thing that locks the winch) that wouldn't budge. The lab was going through the power-on procedure, and we stopped when we found a glitch, looked through the thick 11x17 manual of flowcharts and schematics until we found out how to narrow the problem down to a replaceable part. I didn't fully grasp this at first, since all we had done before was identify the parts, and I tried futilely to manually engage that pawl... lol... it was very stuck with hydraulic pressure.

Today I went twice. But first we went over the quiz from Wednesday, and I figured out what had puzzled me before. The first lab was with Wagner and Clem, and this time it was an electronic fault. The fuse on a power supply "needed replacing"... Mr. Fontaine had removed it for the lab. Then later on we went over a different fault... a fuse on a different power supply, for the same reason.

Thursday we also had our third GMT this month on Sexual Harassment Awareness. This time we had the local SARC (sexual assault resource coordinator) speak for about an hour and a half. The ones before had been very brief... a half-hour or less about current statistics and repercussions. This was more of a discussion about why we are held accountable and situational responses we should have. These lectures are so awkward... everyone gets to laughing every so often, because of the examples or silly phrases used accidentally. The topic is actually very serious, but because it interrupts everyone's free time, and is generally thought unnecessary, people are prone to make a joke out of it. For those reasons I hate going to them. Also I'm sick of hearing about sex in such a negative way. But I do understand that we get new people to the base all the time, and therefore have to repeat information... and I understand the DOD is trying to tackle a big problem and create a new culture in the military that does not stand for these sort of infractions, but I have to wonder if this is the best way.

For PT Thursday morning, I did a leg (well, both of them) workout with Witte and Hibbard. Witte taught us how to do dead weight lifts with the dumb-bell... and my legs have been feeling it!