Doing his duty

PIERRE — When Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Standiford returned to South Dakota on liberty leave after spending more than a year stationed in Japan, he didn’t realize home would be so alien to him.

“It feels good to be home. It’s kind of weird and it’s like a reverse cultural shock,” Standiford said. “After being in Japan a whole year, it’s kind of weird to come back to see the wide streets, open spaces and people driving on the right side of the road.”

Always enjoying technical projects and automotive mechanics, Standiford, 20, a Midland High School graduate, traded-in racing and fixing cars at Oahe Speedway for repairing and quality checking SH-60B “Seahawk” helicopters — the Navy’s version of the “Blackhawk.”

“Everything that has a wire to it, I deal with,” Standiford said.

Being an electrician’s mate, he works on fuel indication, navigation systems, hydraulic landing gear systems, automatic flight control, and indicating and warning systems, among many other repairs, to make helicopters “full mission capable.”

“I love working on aircraft. It’s just a good feeling when you fix a problem and you can see the aircraft take off to go complete a mission,” Standiford said. “It feels good to know that you fixed it and you got it FMC ready to go out to complete the mission.”

Keeping a twin-engine, with four blade rotors, 10.5-ton aircraft flight-worthy is a task Standiford doesn’t take lightly.

“You definitely question yourself once and awhile. I think, ‘Wow. It’s me keeping this aircraft in the air and a lot of lives depend on whether or not I know how to do my job,’” Standiford said. “But there are controls in place. There’s a lot of people that have a lot more experience than me that are checking my work, and there’s always publications to go to if you don’t know it off the top of your head.”

Standiford works with the helicopter fleet on the USS Kitty Hawk, the nation’s oldest active warship. The Seahawk is an antisubmarine warfare helicopter.

The aircraft carrier has a 75-aircraft capacity and is driven by four, 21-foot wide propellers at speeds that reach approximately 30 knots. Standiford said he works 12-hour shifts, seven days a week when the ship is on patrol.

“There are long hours, lots of pressures and everything has to be done quickly. There’s always somebody above you that is putting the pressure on you,” Standiford said.

When Standiford is not on ship, he’s at the U.S. Naval Air Facility in Atsugi, Japan. The facility supports the Carrier Air Wing Five, and is a key location for routing supplies to the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As far as logistics and things, the supply system from our base definitely supports and sends a lot of stuff to the Middle East,” Standiford said. “Aviations support division is a department on our base, and they’re one of the major dropping points for supplies, parts and stuff to go through to get to the Middle East from certain areas.”

Standiford said there’s a strong chance that he could be sent to the Persian Gulf while he is enlisted.

Since enlisting in the Navy on June 27, 2006, Standiford said he likes his job. He enjoys exploring Japanese culture and meeting people from all around the world. He said he believes his decision to enter the military right after high school was a good one.

“There’s not a lot of other opportunities where you could get right of out high school and dive into a high-tech field like that and get your hands dirty right away,” he said.

In his off-duty time, Standiford is taking Web-based classes from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University working toward an associate degree in professional aeronautics. Eventually, he said he wants to become an aviation pilot.

Standiford will return to Japan at the end of the month.