AEDC's Waymond Buchanan keeps the tests going

  • Published
  • By Philip Lorenz III
  • AEDC/PA
ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. --  Waymond "Buck" Buchanan knows a thing or two about working hard. 
He vividly recalls those early years of helping his father, a sharecropper, raise cotton, hay and tobacco on a 70-acre farm in rural middle Tennessee. 

Chopping cotton, cutting hay and harvesting tobacco under a hot summer sun was not the young man's idea of the best way to make a living.

Looking down at his hands and smiling, Buchanan said he knew from an early age that he did not want to follow in his father's footsteps, but the path ahead was far from certain.

Now, after close to 35 years as a test facility plant operator at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), he recalls how an Air Force recruiter's powers of persuasion became the first step to what would eventually become a career.

By 1968, Buchanan was holding down two jobs, but he was already getting restless and more open than he realized to other opportunities.

"I had two jobs - I'd work eight hours at a hospital and four hours at a nursing home serving supper," he recalled. "I went to the recruiter with a friend of mine who was going into the military. I was just bored and went along. My friend asked 'why don't you go in the service?'"

Buchanan, who had no intention of enlisting, said the recruiter talked him into joining, promising both young men that they would be going in together.

"Yeah, we were supposed to be together, but I never did see my friend anymore," he said with a laugh.

Buchanan got training as a power plant operator in the Air Force and served in that capacity from 1968 until 1972, but it was his physical prowess that was his ticket to see some of the world during those years.

"I boxed in the military," he explained. "I went to Spain, Italy and Germany - Munich, Nuremburg - just all over Germany and England, too. I was a welterweight, back and forth between142 to 147 pounds."

Soon after returning to civilian life, he got a job in Fayetteville working at Amana, the company that manufactures air conditioners.

"I had made lead man working in their plastics department making tops and other things for the refrigerators and egg trays," he said. 

By 1972, he had gotten married and knew he had to find a better paying job to support his wife's goal of becoming a nurse.

"My brother-in-law was working up here at the center," Buchanan said. "He was the one who brought me an application form. I put it in and they called me up here for an interview about a year and a half later - that was 1973."

When he started working at AEDC and saw the control rooms in the center's test facility plants, Buchanan initially thought he might have bitten off more than he could chew.

"I thought I'll never learn this," he said. "It was like a space ship. When I came over here to B-Plant, I looked at this board and thought, 'oh Lord,' but I've been training plant operators ever since. Now that I think about it, I've trained or helped to train just about every one of them - about 15 or 20."

At AEDC, test facility plants generate and move pressurized and conditioned air to and from aircraft engine test cells and evacuate air from rocket test cells to conduct flight simulation testing on both legacy and new propulsion systems.

B-Plant (airside), where Buchanan has worked for most of his career, was a pressure, temperature and humidity conditioning facility - it controlled all three of those - that could supply air to turbine engines to replicate the conditions an airplane would experience flying at altitude and Mach number. B-Plant airside was decommissioned in 2006 with C-Plant airside taking over the older plant's role in supplying pressurized and conditioned air to engine test facilities.

The B-Plant and A-Plant exhausters still provide the back end of the engine in test cells with conditions found at altitude. The combination of airside and exhaust side air simulates the conditions an engine in an aircraft would experience in flight at some Mach number and altitude.

When he describes the scope of his job to a visitor, it becomes clear that working at the plants in the Engine Test Facility (ETF), which totaled three until recently, is serious business.

"To be a good operator it takes a good five years because we have so many jobs," he said. "At C-Plant alone, you've got five stations you've got to learn. To learn how to be an operator, you've got to stay on it all the time."

He said it is one thing to know how to start the equipment, take readings and all the rest, but if something like a valve gets stuck or comes apart and the operator panics and doesn't do the right sequence of steps, the lines and ducting can over-pressurize, causing a lot of expensive damage.

"That is the reason they put an experienced operator with someone who's had less time on the job," he said. "A-Plant is down now; they've done away with it, but we still have A-Plant exhausters."

Ted Lester, the maintenance controller for ETF, said Buchanan's professional expertise, leadership abilities and personality have had a lasting impact on all those who have worked with him.

"He knows what everyone else in the control room is doing at all times and knows exactly when to jump in and lend a hand when needed, without making you feel foolish, Lester said. "I've known Buck for about 25 years and worked with him as an operator, under him when he was my lead man and over him when I took a supervisor position. He taught me a great deal during all three of those times and I still rely on him when I have questions about how the plant operates. Buck always makes his job look easy and it is anything but that. Also, Buck's sense of humor is legend."

Joe Helms, the Engine Testing Facility plant operations engineering section manager, agrees with the scope of Buchanan's job and the importance of staying calm when the unexpected happens.

"I think the biggest challenge in his job is keeping track of everything that is going on and seeing to it that things occur when they should," Helms said. "Another aspect of his job is to react to problems when they occur and provide leadership in dealing with them. I agree that Buck take his job very seriously and I have never seen him panic even though we have gone through some rough tests together."

Helms added, "I've known Buck for a long time, probably 20 years and I've found him to be an excellent lead man who is well respected by his peers."

Advances in automation have contributed to a reduction in the number of plant operators, but erratic and long hours still keep Buchanan busy. A plant operator is also an equipment caretaker, and long hours with everything functioning well can lead to complacency. He recognizes the need to remain vigilant and puts his natural social skills into play, literally.

"I have seen his sense of humor relieve both tension and boredom during long runs in the control room," Helms said, acknowledging another trait that makes Buck Buchanan a popular man at work.

"Buck's also an excellent and generous cook and I have tried his ribs, but I'm partial to the big pots of chili he has brought in on occasion though," he said. 

Buchanan lives in Fayetteville, Tenn.,  with his wife Mary Ella, a Registered Nurse who works on an obstetrics unit at Huntsville Hospital; and son, Joseph Wayne, a 21-year-old college student at MTSU, taking business administration courses.

Buchanan enjoys shooting his rifles and pistols at a range in Fayetteville; cooking for family and friends and driving his restored vintage 1956 Chevy Bel Air.