How Does Aluminum Cut Steel?

So you do not know much about jet fuel then?

I work on the airframe of aircraft and know a bit about aerodynamics and structural analysis.

I can look up the characteristics of different jet fuels from their Materials Safety Data Sheets, but for day-to-day work, my main concern with jet fuel is how much (volume) and how heavy (mass).

I have to facilitate the design of the airframe to allow for the required fuel volume and thus also efficiently support that weight.

Well i actually put fuel in planes and had to calculate gallons to pounds for each flight.

Ok, so you're the equivalent of the fuel pump guy that shows up when I park my car next to the full-service pump.

I'm the guy that pretty much designed the car that just pulled up to your full-service pump for you to fill up.

Gallons to pounds and vise versa is no hard calculation there, my friend. .8075 kg/L or 6.739 lbs/gal.

I work with the Materials & Processing guys who deal with all the materials that go into the helicopter. They are walking encyclopedias of information those things, including the jet fuel.

No i am the guy that actually kept the plane flying and was responsable for the lives of the pilots that flew in it.

Ask the guys you work with who know so much how many maintenance hours it takes for each flight hour for and RF-4C to keep it flying.

Also how many of the people you work with are directly responsable for the lives of the pilots.



[edit on 21-6-2008 by ULTIMA1]

And I'm one of the many guys that's responsible for the safety of the pilots, crews, and passengers, as well as the aircraft from the start. Even before you get to touch it.

I don't know about the RF-4C, since that's a Boeing product, but the current M/CH-53E is getting old (which is why there's a 53K program to replace it) and requires roughly 44 hours of service per every 1 flight-hour. Didn't think I'd know that huh? We keep in touch with our military guys. We know what's going on with our products.

I know quite a few guys that work in our Overhaul & Repair, Ground Support, Logistics, Aircraft Modification, and Field Repairs divisions that go out directly to the customer (be it commercial or military) to fix whatever's wrong and actually advise the ground crew and pilots as to what to do.

This is just what we provide the military side, the commercial side is just as large, if not larger.
www.sikorsky.com...

But I like to say that all of us on this program (and all of our company programs) are directly responsible for the lives of the pilots, crews, and passengers.

Since this is a rebuild of the M/CH-53E, any new safety devices that came out between then and now are designed into the aircraft from the start. I can't go into specifics since I do want to keep my job. Any and all problems that you (the ground crew), pilots, and passengers have mentioned are being designed out (or at least minimized) as the program goes on. We have constant NAVAIR meetings as well as bring in the Marines directly for their inputs.

Hell, we have many veterans and currently active members of all branches of the military in our program.

Also, new armor (that's general enough to say) has been designed into pretty much all the critical areas. As well as making sure that any gun system the Marines might use has the clearance to be easily attached to the ports.

If we didn't care about the safety of the pilots, crews, and passengers, we won't have a Safety group working on the program just dedicated to that.

If we didn't care about the safety of the pilots, crews, and passengers, we won't have a Human Factors group working on the program (they're the ones that make sure guys like you can actually do the repairs and operate what needs to be operated without having to twist your body out of shape).

If we didn't care about the safety of the pilots, crews, and passengers, we would have designed to the lowest weight and highest performance and not included any armor or electronic warfare systems or made provisions for weapons.

We are the ones at the very front of the whole thing bending over backwards trying to fit as many of these systems into the helicopter as we physically can to make sure that the helicopter and everyone on it makes it back each and every time. Hell, that's the company slogan.

We pioneer flight solutions that bring people home anywhere...any time

Go and take a look at the program page for yourself, Ultima:
www.sikorsky.com...

So don't go telling me we don't do anything for the safety of the pilots, crews, and passengers.

Sorry Mods and guys of this thread for going off-topic here. I just had to respond.

[edit on 22-6-2008 by HLR53K]

Well actually the F-4 was built by McDonnell Douglas. You were very lucky if you could get 3 flights in a day without having major maintenence to do, you could go days with few or no flights for maintenence.

If the CH-53 requires 44 hours of service for every 1 hour of flight time, when does it ever fly?

True, but Boeing bought out McDonnell Douglas, so that's why I refer to Boeing.

The M/CH-53 flies a lot right now. I believe we have around 15 of them doing sorties in Iraq right now. It's called flying in shifts. Some are flying their missions while the others are being worked on. Plenty of M/CH-53s to go around out there. But it's definitely an old dog.

Well i woked on RF-4's in the 80's and my plane was built in 1969 (it was 1 of the newest planes we had). Several of our planes had seen service in Viet Nam.







[edit on 23-6-2008 by ULTIMA1]