Concrete Aprons

White and crisp but not the aprons your mamma used to wear.

Aprons in the airfield construction sense are essentially massively large chunks of pavement on which to park planes and jets and helicopters.

Actually, the stretch of pavement shown above is for a taxiway and not an apron, but it will connect the runway to a couple of different aprons, also under construction here, as well as PAX (passenger) and cargo terminals.  The paver is new and pretty top of the line, belonging to the ECCI-Metag JV who are doing the work here.  I worked with ECCI and some of the same folks up at Bagram, so coming here was a sort of reunion.  The photo below is the area directly behind the paver, and you can get an idea of the massive amounts of concrete used to place this 22″ thick lane of taxiway.

And a motley crew indeed standing in front of the paver in the picture below!  You may recognize the guy standing next to me – Eric worked with me at Bagram and shows up in the post Seven Thousand Words walking around in the bottom of a monster fuel tank under construction there.  The pile of concrete behind us is left there by dump trucks which back down the lane until positioned for plopping their load of concrete in the paver’s lap, so to speak.  The little green bars are actually 2′ long solid metal dowel rods.  They are nearly 2″ in diameter and weigh over 15 pounds apiece.  They are used to tie the paving lanes together to help transfer loads between the panels.

Construction is so cool…

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Yes, still in Shindand for now frantically trying to tie up loose ends, pack, mail things home and generally bring my thirteen months in Afghanistan to a close.  Lots of mixed emotions here – excitement at going home, sadness to leave friends and projects nearing completion…  But the temperature today?  110 degrees F in the shade.  And it’s not even summer yet.