Day Sixteen

And it's still leaking.

The consensus is that the sealer used (the sealer required by the repair engineers at the factory) was too hard and brittle.

Nobody should ever be allowed to engineer until they have spent three years working on the floor of whatever their engineering.

I don't know for certain the sealer was the problem but I do know it was impossible to scrape and pick out of the crevices.

The decision was made to remove part of the leading edge and start over.

This afternoon I witnessed an all too common event. I'm going to use a highly technical term here so forgive me. I saw a "Monkey F*****g A Football".

There must have been eight guys working along the first four feet of the wing. On top, underneath and in front. Drilling out rivets and peeling the leading edge off.

We'll see. Rather, I hope we don't see. I hope we don't see fuel coming out of the dern thing.

Coincidentally, today was my 16Th consecutive day on the clock. Been a while since I pulled a marathon. I kind of like it. This one will probably run 20 days, minimum.

Actually got to work on a good ol' King Air today. Not my favorite task, balancing and hanging a rudder.

{Technical writers should fall in the same category with engineers. Worky first writey later.
The King Air maintenance manual tells you to pull the one bold securing the rudder hinge to the airframe instead of the four bolts that secure the hinge to the rudder.
I remember back when I was just a kid asking, "Why don't we just pull these two bolts instead of the eight others?"
The guy I was working with said, "OK, you can do that but how are you going to get the bolt out and IF you got it out how ya gonna get it back in AND then how are you gonna get a torque wrench in there afterwards?"
"Oh."
There is not enough room for the bolt to clear the hinge but that's what (this version) the manual says to do.}

I managed to escape the Leaker and have spent most of my time on another airplane in the throes of delivery.

Inspecting an airplane sucks. Repairs can be fun. Reassembling is OK. Delivery is where the action is!

Troubleshooting can be one of the most frustrating things. When you wrestle that rascal to the ground you feel good.

We had a couple of goodies:

"Why isn't the left loadmeter metering?"
'Cause the meter was wired backwards.'

"Hey, why is that fire 'Extinguisher Discharged' light on? It wasn't on earlier."
'Uh, I'm not sure. I think the connector on the circuit card wasn't seated completely. The light went out while I was checking and resetting connections.'

"My ears are popping. Why are we pressurizing on the ground?"
'A new pressure switch had been installed. It was bad from supply.'

"WHOA! Why don't I have any nose wheel steering?!"
'The steering disconnect actuator had failed in the disconnect position. So, in a case like that you use differential throttle and brakes to steer.'

That's a few of them but probably more than you wanted to know. She test flew today. Returned in one piece and I didn't hear any "Aw, sh*ts." so I headed out. 0530 is plenty soon enough for me to know what needs to be done.

That's a Whole Lotta Nada about aircraft maintenance. No doubt more than ya cared to hear but, "I yam what I yam!"