Monday in Andover

No calls today, but there was no lack of firefighting work. Today was focused on truck operations and while it was raining it is a good time to do it because then you do not have to stand out in the rain. Today started off with my usual when its a slow sunday or just a day off from working at Franklin. I was cruising around the station checking on random things on the truck that I think of and trying to think of more projects I can do on the forestry. I went to the back of the forestry and noticed the rear discharge was leaking I tried a variety of ways to get it to stop but eventually just put the nozzle right on the discharge so that it would keep it from spilling on the floor. I also decided I should make a metal mount for the switch for the mechanical siren for the time being I had zip tied it to the bottom of the dash which works but isn't the most professional job. This brought me to lunch time and as I left the station I couldn't help but wonder if any of the towns people have noticed that my truck is all ways in the parking lot, and I am all ways at the station. After lunch Sam and I asked the chief if we could go draft with the forestry down on black water lane. He said we could so we loaded up and headed down. I had originally thought we should pull up somewhere around the bridge, but when we got down there we realized that the culvert farther down would be a better option. I am all ways impressed at how fast that thing primes itself. It also will pump with a lot of pressure and we didn't even have it going all out. It will pump up to 500 gallons per minute but you need a bigger suction than we are carrying on it right now. We pumped using all the discharges mostly for me to get a handle on running the truck because hopefully next brush fire if it ever stops raining I will get to not only try out the new sirens I put on it but run the truck at the scene. I eventually had sam take a 1 3/4 inch line off the reel in the back of the truck and pumped water toward him. Originally I sent him a little more pressure than he was expecting which was only about 1/4 throttle on the truck but the pressure was a lot to handle. He was amaised by the output of the truck and I got a cool picture of this which I will put at the end of this if i can figure out how and it will be on my final poster. Latter at the Andover meeting chief left it up to us to do what we wanted to train on. Zach and I were originally going to test one of the dry hydrants on switch road, but after the chief sent us to get soda at jakes which we bought 14 12 packs of, we ran out of time. Instead I asked if Zach could show me how run engine 1 down the road. We were sent to do it on some back roads and I have had a fair amount of experience moving it around the station and the parking lots but not on the road. I did better than I thought I was going to do because last time I was driving it out of first gear I was pretty shaky on the gear changes. For a transmission it is a 5 speed with a 2 speed rear end which means it has a high and low range. I got practice shifting through all the gears with no clutch because thats the way Zach wanted me to do it and the way I drive my friends dump truck. I also got a lot of practice shifting ranges and this gave me a lot of confidence for my CDL driving tests which hopefully I will take this summer. I have no set plans for tomorrow except calling New London in the morning and maybe making a bracket for that switch to mount on.