I'm Corporal Melissa Vautour originally from Dalhousie, New Brunswick,
an Aircraft Structures Technician currently posted to 8 Wing Trenton, Ontario.
Aircraft Structures Technicians, or ACS Techs for short, are responsible for the repair,
maintenance, and reconstruction of all the outer surfaces and interior structural components
of Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft.
If it's part of an aircraft's wings, fuselage, nose, tail or frame,
it's the job of ACS Techs to keep it in mission-ready condition.
They also take care of the upholstery, seat belts, and safety equipment on board.
As part of the air maintenance team, ACS Techs work alongside Avionics Systems Technicians,
Aviation Systems Technicians
and Air Weapons Systems Technicians
to make sure that every aircraft takes off with the ability to carry out its mission,
and the firepower to back it up.
They work directly on the aircraft in between flights and servicing checks.
They also work on more in-depth second-line maintenance
where more extensive repairs are handled.
The front-line units, they have a bit of a different ACS feel to them,
and they might be doing stuff hands-on the aircraft,
such as servicing and inspections and changing configurations in the layouts of the plane,
whereas you have other people within the trade that are shop-based,
and they might be doing fabricating, they might be prototyping.
So there's so much versatility within this trade specifically,
that each day is completely different and you're not going to find yourself within this trade
in a very monotonous, cookie-cutter kind of a work environment.
Aircraft Structures Technicians spend most of their careers in hangars and workshops
on Air Force bases here in Canada, but they also serve aboard Royal Canadian Navy ships
when they deploy with maritime helicopters.
ACS Techs also deploy with the Air Force on missions overseas with Canada's NATO allies.
I've had the opportunity to work on some projects that aren't your typical, normal projects.
Within the past year or so, I had an opportunity to refurbish
and repaint our unit plane. I had the time of my life!
I had to come up with a design concept, and it's something you don't typically see every day.
So I'm very proud of that work that I've done.
This trade, specifically, allows you to be creative, right -
you're only limited by your imagination within this trade.
On completion of their military and occupational training, Aircraft Structures Technicians
are assigned to a squadron on a Wing here in Canada,
where they'll continue with on-the-job training on specific airframes.
If you're on the flight line, you're going to get training specific to the fleet
that you'll be working on, in addition to honing up on more of your ACS skills.
If you go into more of a shop environment, usually what happens is you're going to go on
a rotational basis to the different shops for the key elements of the ACS trade.
ACS Techs have welding skills, advanced machining skills, sheet metal skills;
they take care of painting, composite repair, and media blasting
and they deal extensively with aircraft fasteners.
Not every part of the trade appeals to everybody - that's a given.
But what you'll find is you get the opportunity to try on many different hats
and many different skillsets that you wouldn't normally get to do.
So in doing that, you can finesse and fine-tune the one
that you're most passionate about and make a good career of it.
You can't get that level of reward in a lot of the civilian trades out there.
You have so many opportunities within the military
to just kind of grow within your respective trade.
When I was able to get into the ACS trade and I was able to kind of get my hands
on some of those technician skills that weren't available to me before,
it was just mind-blowing.
I was able to build, to fabricate, to do all of these types of things,
and I wasn't necessarily limited to sitting behind a computer screen
in a more historical 'female' role.
We're seeing more women in the trade, and we're seeing more women in non-traditional roles
which is amazing and awesome.