-
Mechanical engineering
The twisted wire that keeps a jet engine's bolts from coming loose
Safety wire, or lockwire, on jet engines: twisted steel wire run between two fasteners so that a bolt trying to loosen is pulled tight again.
-
Mechanical engineering
Taking engines apart at sixteen, and who touches the oily parts
Old piston and jet engines in an Air Force school hangar, the spark you see when the propeller turns, and leading a team into the oily jobs by doing them first.
-
Mechanical engineering
I opened a jet engine and the back was empty
Inside an opened jet engine: the fire in the middle, a honeycomb seal round the blade tips, and blades whose grains follow the centrifugal force.
-
Mechanical engineering · Measurement
Learning a Navion's cockpit, and what a pitot tube measures
An old Navion at an Air Force school: starting it from the cockpit, rudder, elevator and ailerons, and how a pitot tube turns air pressure into airspeed.
-
Mechanical engineering · Measurement
How we looked for cracks nobody can see
Non-destructive testing from the hangar: fluorescent penetrant that makes cracks glow, X-ray, and the tap test, and why aircraft parts are checked this way.