Saturday, November 13, 2010

Small places

This past week I was worked on fixing damage to the firewall of the airplane. The firewall is a piece of stainless steel that is designed to protect the cabin area from the engine compartment in case of an engine fire. Where the hangers (supports) for the exhaust stacks attached to the firewall and there were cracks in the firewall from the constant vibration. I stop drilled the cracks so that they would not continue to get longer, and then made a patch which was riveted to the firewall to give the strength and integrity back to that area.


To buck the rivets, I had to crawl into a small place which is normally where the pilots put their feet, on the rudder pedals. Of course the pedals have been taken out, but it was still hot (with a shop light right next to my head), loud, and camped working in that small space for 2 hours! But, the damage is fixed and now it is ready for another 10,000 hours.

2 comments:

Ed said...

This kind of reminds me of you and Mark working underneath the pedals of the car while in our garage. We even had a portable heater in the space because it was so cold in there.
10,000 more hours before you can put in a request for a Kodiak!

BW said...

Hey David -

With all this talk about riveting - I'm glad that all that practice in your garage is coming in handy!

God Bless -

Barry