MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
My first job after college was a USAF mechanical engineer at Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, Tinker AFB, OK. A big part of our work was keeping "Older" aircraft flying, and at that time Older meant 15 to 20 years, late 50's to early 60's hardware. Even at that time we had problems with companies that had produced hardware for airplanes like the F-106 having gone out of business or bought out by other companies, and technical data lost or incomplete. For example, the F-106A had a switch that automatically transferred fuel when the fighter went supersonic, retrimming the airplane when the center of lift moved aft. It was a very reliable little piece of 50's technology, and a consequence of that was we did not buy parts to repair it or even know how to fix it. The company that held the tech data admitted they were missing the data required to make the parts and suggested substituting an electronic box that they had developed to fix the post stall gyration of the A-7D. Unlike the older gear it used solid state transducers instead of bellows and integrated circuits to detect when the airplane got to mach 1.05.
Then there was the F-106 cooling turbine, the most complex one around and also the least reliable. We started a project to see if we could substitute an F-4 cooling turbine.
I did have to "design" a part for the H-19 helicopter. It seems some of our allies were still flying them. The "design" process consisted of getting a part out of supply and making a USAF drawing of it.
The thing was, we had teams working in pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, structures, etc, as did the other Air Logistics Centers for the aircraft they were responsible for. We examined failed parts to detect possible problems and areas for improvement We supported Mishap Boards. We looked at ways to reduce costs. One day we all but grounded the entire F-105 fleet when, after a fatal mishap, we found that some genius at OC-ALC had decided to stop time compliance change outs of the Auxillary Fuel Tank Pressure Regulators beacuse it was "Too Much Trouble" to do so. So we had an unknown number of those regulators that might just be about to blow up an airplane. And one day we grounded ALL of the KC-97's from further operations and sent them to the boneyard because one of the oldest engineers found out that there was a severe corrosion problem with the landing gear attach points.
Now, for the WW2 warbirds, 80 years old rather than 15 or 20, who is doing that ALC job? Nobody! Individual shops may be looking at things they know about but NO ONE is surveying the whole remaining fleet and trying to anticipate what might occur and what might be done to fix it.
I have found out that for my 1946 Ercoupe new 5.0
4 nosewheel tires now cost $650 each. I am looking into modifications to enable the use of the far more common 5.05 nosewheel tires, but since that has implicatons for the whole landing gear it will take some engineering work to implement.
Then there was the F-106 cooling turbine, the most complex one around and also the least reliable. We started a project to see if we could substitute an F-4 cooling turbine.
I did have to "design" a part for the H-19 helicopter. It seems some of our allies were still flying them. The "design" process consisted of getting a part out of supply and making a USAF drawing of it.
The thing was, we had teams working in pneumatics, hydraulics, electronics, structures, etc, as did the other Air Logistics Centers for the aircraft they were responsible for. We examined failed parts to detect possible problems and areas for improvement We supported Mishap Boards. We looked at ways to reduce costs. One day we all but grounded the entire F-105 fleet when, after a fatal mishap, we found that some genius at OC-ALC had decided to stop time compliance change outs of the Auxillary Fuel Tank Pressure Regulators beacuse it was "Too Much Trouble" to do so. So we had an unknown number of those regulators that might just be about to blow up an airplane. And one day we grounded ALL of the KC-97's from further operations and sent them to the boneyard because one of the oldest engineers found out that there was a severe corrosion problem with the landing gear attach points.
Now, for the WW2 warbirds, 80 years old rather than 15 or 20, who is doing that ALC job? Nobody! Individual shops may be looking at things they know about but NO ONE is surveying the whole remaining fleet and trying to anticipate what might occur and what might be done to fix it.
I have found out that for my 1946 Ercoupe new 5.0
4 nosewheel tires now cost $650 each. I am looking into modifications to enable the use of the far more common 5.05 nosewheel tires, but since that has implicatons for the whole landing gear it will take some engineering work to implement.
