About 50 years ago I worked with an engineer who worked for Buick. He quit because the bigwigs decided to start designing the exterior of the cars first and then having the designers figure out how to cram everything in that package. Apparently nothing has changed.
If I had known then... I'd still have the 63 Impala SS and the 66 LeMans. No, actually my ex would have gotten at least one of them, and destroyed it like she did the Olds Vista Cruiser I bought her when we split. Ran it out of coolant in a Las Vegas Summer.
It’s now under “new management”. Though, like all things government, I’m not 100% sure it’s any better.
LOL, I may know you. I worked there as a third party inspector between GM and Jack Cooper trucking inspecting the Envoys, Trailblazers, and Isuzu Ascenders as they came off the line. Still to this day I can count on one hand the number of (305) Xuv Envoys I have seen on the road. Sure do wish I had the pay and benefits you guys did, but nope it was 9$ an hour 20 years ago.
Wow, I thought the F16 weapoons system sucked. But actually the Air Force does take the engineers who design the airplanes and have them put through the paces with the maintenance troops. I was on that team and it was a great experience, I would like to think some of my input is on the new fighters now. One of the best parts was after a doing the dog and pony shows the engineers to us out and got us drunk, I think it was to loosen us up so we would really bitch about the airplanes.
Did something similar for the quick reaction 20' satellite dish I worked on. TO verification. I was considered a subject matter expert for having worked on the thing for several years, including having deployed ours to Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Little things, like mine having been used in a drop test, and not having any immediate problems show up. Until months later.
The trunnions that support most of the dishes weight started cracking. Got replaced. Cracked again. Several times. Thing was a 1/2" thick aluminum casting. Eventually suggested they remake them out of steel. That alone would more than double the breaking strength. They kept telling us that was impossible. Started having the same problems with other antennae. There were lots of them, and all used a 10-ton jack screw to raise and lower the dish. Then they actually did it. When I retired in '97, they hadn't had another trunnion crack.One of the errors I pointed out during the TO verification was a drawing of the angle indicator was upside.down in the TO. They swore it was right, until I led them out to the antenna we were using, and showed them...
It was, over all, fun, and I met some cool people, learned some cool stuff. I'm not a drinker. Wasn't much of one even then. Didn't have a headache for the whole event...
Oh! I wasn't all that fond of the F-16. I was a photographer at Nellis for 5 years. Got a lot business from the F-16's. I rewrote the lyrics to Camptown Racetrack... Nellis flightline 3 miles long, do dah, do dah, -16's crashing all day long... They were built by the same folks who inflicted the F-111D on me when I was an F-111D crew chief some years earlier.
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There was a good reason everyone call the F16 a yard dart. But after trouble shooting the F16 everything else was easy, it was like running with weights on after you took them off you could really go great. The one that got me was one day I was up at the floor supervisors desk messing around and found a mysterious piles of documents. Well they were from our frenemies at General Dynamics, started reading them and low and behold it was about phantom failures on our testers. Told us to ignore certain fail numbers on our tester. I was the lead troubleshooter in our shop and had to ask "How long have you all had these?" reply "a couple months, never got around to reading them." I just started to laugh. Went around the shop and out to the Awaiting Parts shed, came back and told them there was 48 missile launchers that we could return to service really quickly. Saved my shop 81,000 dollars, got my own inbox at the desk, became the swing shift Dull Sword paper guy, and probably other punishments/rewards that I can't remember. The Air Force in Europe during the cold war was weird, I was just an E-3 at this time, we all had responsibility above than what rank we wore. Got to Hill AFB and they looked at my training records in disbelief. It was a great time of my life though.Did something similar for the quick reaction 20' satellite dish I worked on. TO verification. I was considered a subject matter expert for having worked on the thing for several years, including having deployed ours to Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Little things, like mine having been used in a drop test, and not having any immediate problems show up. Until months later.
One of the errors I pointed out during the TO verification was a drawing of the angle indicator was upside.down in the TO. They swore it was right, until I led them out to the antenna we were using, and showed them...
It was, over all, fun, and I met some cool people, learned some cool stuff. I'm not a drinker. Wasn't much of one even then. Didn't have a headache for the whole event...
Oh! I wasn't all that fond of the F-16. I was a photographer at Nellis for 5 years. Got a lot business from the F-16's. I rewrote the lyrics to Camptown Racetrack... Nellis flightline 3 miles long, do dah, do dah, -16's crashing all day long... They were built by the same folks who inflicted the F-111D on me when I was an F-111D crew chief some years earlier.
I was in USAFE from very late 1991 until early 1996. Lindsey AS, Sembach AS, and Ramstein. Seems to me there should be one other in there. 1st Mob. When we got to Ramstein, we were put in the revetments that were no longer in use. I was mostly an REMF by then. Sent my guys out to various fine places like Tuzla Air Field, and Rwanda... Enlisted in the last years of the war in Vietnam, Spent 3 years and two tours in Turkey, in the mid to late 80's. 15 minutes flight time from the nearest Soviet airfield. CONUS before and after that, and Germany. Fun times! Some more than others. Messed up my knees in 1975 and got out of being a crew chief, did photography for a decade, then SATCOM for the last 12 years to make my 24. Got the Fogy raise, and retired in the OKC Metro, and raised three kids here. Still raising a couple of them.
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