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Senior Airman Jordan Egerton, of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, sets a reusable wash cover in place on an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The covers save more than 1,400 man hours and $20,000 annually.

Senior Airman Jordan Egerton, of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, sets a reusable wash cover in place on an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The covers save more than 1,400 man hours and $20,000 annually. (Tory Cusimano/U.S. Air Force)

Senior Airman Jordan Egerton, of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, sets a reusable wash cover in place on an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The covers save more than 1,400 man hours and $20,000 annually.

Senior Airman Jordan Egerton, of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, sets a reusable wash cover in place on an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The covers save more than 1,400 man hours and $20,000 annually. (Tory Cusimano/U.S. Air Force)

Senior Airman Stephen Jones, of the 31st Medical Group, stands in front of a mobile MRI machine outside the medical clinic at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The medical group has saved significant time annually by contracting for the mobile MRI to see patients twice a month.

Senior Airman Stephen Jones, of the 31st Medical Group, stands in front of a mobile MRI machine outside the medical clinic at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The medical group has saved significant time annually by contracting for the mobile MRI to see patients twice a month. (Heidi Goodsell/U.S. Air Force)

Senior Airman Eric Frank, of the 31st Maintenance Squadron, stands in front of an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The squadron fabricated steel pins allowing personnel to cut maintenance procedures from 72 hours to just six hours.

Senior Airman Eric Frank, of the 31st Maintenance Squadron, stands in front of an F-16 Viper at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. The squadron fabricated steel pins allowing personnel to cut maintenance procedures from 72 hours to just six hours. (Robert Waggoner/U.S. Air Force)

Tech. Sgt. Michael Rutland of the 31st Operations Support Squadron stands in front of a parachute simulator at Aviano Air Base, Feb. 21, 2020. The new simulator allowed the 31st Fighter Wing to shave 300 training hours off pilot parachute training annually.

Tech. Sgt. Michael Rutland of the 31st Operations Support Squadron stands in front of a parachute simulator at Aviano Air Base, Feb. 21, 2020. The new simulator allowed the 31st Fighter Wing to shave 300 training hours off pilot parachute training annually. (Robert Waggoner/U.S. Air Force)

Tech. Sgt. Tyree Porter, vault storage area supervisor at the 31st Security Forces Squadron, stands in front of an upgraded mobile vehicle barrier at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020.

Tech. Sgt. Tyree Porter, vault storage area supervisor at the 31st Security Forces Squadron, stands in front of an upgraded mobile vehicle barrier at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 21, 2020. (Robert Waggoner/U.S. Air Force)

AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — It still takes a lot of time and tape to keep an F-16 from having its electronics scrambled while running it through a wash, but less than it used to after a simple innovation that 31st Fighter Wing airmen came up with in the hangar bay.

The 3D-printed reusable wash covers they developed to protect sensitive parts are among 58 Aviano entries in the Lt. Gen. William H. Tunner Innovation Madness contest, which will net the winner a $150,000 top prize through US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa, the contest sponsor.

Aviano, a base in rural northeast Italy situated along the Dolomite Mountains, is trying to win for the first time since the annual competition began in 2015. The 48th Fighter Wing at RAF Lakenheath in England won last year and in 2016, while the nearby 100th Refueling Wing at Mildenhall won in 2018. Other past winners include Ramstein’s 86th Airlift Wing and Spangdahlem’s 52nd Fighter Wing in Germany.

This year, Aviano is counting on a slew of innovations or upgrades that saved the base about $2.8 million, or about 75% more than a similar improvement process saved last year, said Brad Hebing, the 31st Fighter Wing’s process manager.

The changes also saved a lot of time, particularly for the airmen washing the fighter jets. Previously, every sensitive component had to be individually taped.

“This process placed a heavy demand on crew chief manpower along with generating a significant waste of barrier material,” said Master Sgt. Katherine S. Garneau, of the 31st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.

The reusable covers reduced taping time from eight hours to three hours, Garneau said.

In other cases, research and smart shopping helped. The 31st Security Forces Squadron needed new vehicle barriers and rejected several options that would have meant more time spent by airmen standing at the gates.

The new barriers they’ve since installed “were easy to set up, take down and eliminated having to station personnel at each entry control point, said Master Sgt. Brett Rosebrook, the installation security noncommissioned officer in charge.

Aviano also replaced its obsolete parachute simulator with a more realistic model, which aids airmen learning how to survive and evade an enemy after ejecting from an aircraft. The simulator saves about 300 hours per year due to more efficient training, said Tech. Sgt. Michael Rutland, of the 31st Operations Support Squadron.

Medical care also got a little easier at Aviano after the wing acquired a mobile MRI system. The acquisition means that the base clinic no longer waits up to 30 days to get off-base MRI results, said Lt. Col. Valerie Hostetler, a doctor at the clinic.

The Innovation Madness winner will be announced later this year after participants compete in three rounds. The overall winner takes $150,000, while second place earns $50,000, third place gets $25,000 and fourth place wins $10,000. Other cash prizes will be awarded throughout the competition.

llamas.norman@stripes.com Twitter: @llamasnorman

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Norman covers the U.S. military in Northern Italy and sometimes elsewhere for Stars and Stripes. He was born in Guatemala and raised in Rhode Island. He has more than 10 years of experience as an Army photojournalist and has served as a photojournalism instructor at the Defense Information School.

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