The layoff was a bit of a bummer. I needed just two more years and then I was going to call it quits and retire. But, there was a "purge" of old dudes. I could have retired now but financially everything would have to go my way. Too much too hope for. However, after a 4 month vacation, I just landed a contract position at the Bell Helicopter test lab in Fort Worth. I think this can carry me for two more years.
Ty, I do not build or fly that much anymore. I keep my hand in but I have other irons in the fire. One of them has been to learn Spanish. After 6 years of learning it, I can now read a newspaper article and pretty much understand a newscast in Spanish. Movies are still a problem, I need the subtitles. I only have time to fly in the Dallas contests now. Since I know enough about Spanish grammar and verb conjugations, I volunteer at the Fort Worth library to help beginners with basic Spanish. I do this on Saturday mornings. I recently got my latest plane (an Oriental) straightened out. I had some alignment problem that required surgery. All is OK now, flies great. I was going to fly it in a recent Dallas contest but the usual hurricane force winds forced me to sit that one out.
Back to the F-35: If there is anything I can be grateful for in my aerospace career, it has been the chance to be involved in performing structural tests on the most advanced aircraft ever made. F-16, F-22, F-35. All have been marvels of engineering.
The F-35 is in a class by itself. There are 3 versions: A conventional take-off and landing (Air Force), STOVL (short takeoff, vertical landing) for Marines and maybe even Air Force, and a Navy version.
There is supposed to be a large degree of common design among the three versions. That has been achieved to some degree. But, as you might imagine, there are some big differences.
The Navy version (for catapult and cable arrestment) has taller vertical tails. The rudders might also might have larger chord length. I am not sure of that. The Navy version has larger horizontal stabilators. The wing is also larger and it contains ailerons as well as flaperons. There is a wing fold between the trailing edge control surfaces. All three have full length leading edge flaps. The Navy version, as you can imagine, requires the leading edge flaps to be in two segments due to the wing fold.
If you look at that video, you can see the lift fan air "EXIT" doors. They are on the bottom of the fuselage, just behind the nose gear doors. There are two of these lift fan air exit doors, one on each side. I also had a hand in the structural test of these lift fan air exit doors, as well as the nose gear doors. When I left Lockheed, the Navy version and the STOVL version were undergoing full scale airframe fatigue tests. The static tests on these two versions had been completed. The British are doing the static and fatigue tests of the Air Force version. I have no idea why the work was divided in this manner.
In order for the rear nozzle to rotate down, there are also two doors back there that open in order for the nozzle to rotate. I have never seen a plane with so many doors and hydraulic actuators. Yes, it is something like a "transformer", out of the movie. All of these "holes" in the structure must have caused a nightmare for the structural designers and stress engineers.
How many of you have noticed that the F-35 canopy is hinged at the forward end, not the aft end? I think this was required due to the lift fan. There may have been no way to incorporate the canopy hinge and associated opening and closing mechanism due to the lift fan structure. So, it had to be somewhere else. But, because there is no air blast to help carry the canopy away during ejection, a new system had to be developed to get rid of the canopy for pilot ejection. I was not involved in these tests, but I saw a set up and there were explosive charges placed in certain locations to disintegrate the canopy to clear the way for the pilot to get out.
The last time I looked, the only version that has an internal cannon is the Air Force version. It is in the upper left wing root, like the F-16. The gun is 25mm. At least, that is what I heard. Maybe the 20mm is not enough punch anymore. The STOVL and the Navy versions have no internal gun but a 30mm gun pod can be attached to the fuselage centerline.
And, for those of you who think the F-16 is finished: One of my last assignments was to help with test fixture design to do a full scale fatigue test of an F-16 airframe. The Air Force "donated" a rather late model to Lockheed. Apparently, new foreign customers want proof that the structure of the latest versions would survive the expected flight hours. Since the last fatigue test was done in the late 80's or early 90's on an older version, Lockheed decided to fatigue test a later version. More than 30 years after first flight, the F-16 is still being built, still being tested. There are some employees whose entire career has been working on just this aircraft.
The F-16 was a General Dynamics design. Lockheed bought the Fort Worth facility sometime around '92, when General Dynamics decided to get out of the business. Some would say Lockheed inherited a gold mine.
Topic: USS WASP (Read 2756 times)