MX Woes...

Of Rocks and Men....
A chronicle of Foreign Object Damage




One of the ever threatening woes of any pilot is the possibility of being grounded due to maintenance (MX) problems. This unfortunate experience can be both frustrating and challenging. A pilot does not like to be stuck in any one place for too long, and when there are places to go or missions to complete we are constantly itching to move along and keep busy with our business. Circumstances like that pictured here put a large crimp in our plans and efforts. The situation only grows worse in direct proportion to the number of pilots attached to a specific fleet of airplanes and programs. Pilots can be a rare breed of men who become catty little creeps when they aren't given enough stimulation to keep their restless minds active and busy. It is a wonderful example of the old maxim "Idle minds are the devils workshop..." (Thanks Rich, for reminding me...)

So; idle pilots, given enough idle time can become a hard group to handle. This is in no way representative of the guys I work with currently (at least at the moment), but I have no doubt that given enough time...with not too many things to do or places to go, we could have interesting things happening on my watch. May I always be vigilant...

This particular story has a few too many tangents to chronicle here, it is in fact a rather bland string of events, but it has direct correlations to the process of creating the "devils workshop" here on the Island. This dull story began late last week when our intrepid ground crews (a whole different type of psyche to deal with) pulled one of the aircraft into the hangar and promptly noticed a rather incessant leak from one of the fuel tanks. This of course prompted an immediate closer look which led to the draining and removal of that particular tank. The repercussions of this are cramming eight pilots into the flight schedule of one airplane. Further putting a crimp in our plans, a flight crew brought the other airplane (without the fuel leak) in after a successful flight only to discover the damaged propeller pictured above. This of course causes a sigh of dismay on my part, with a whole list of problems coming to mind that don't have anything to do with this dilemna but are directly caused by it. What to do...? How to conduct damage control...? How to keep my guys gainfully employed so they don't go crazy...? I dunno.

The short and easy answer is to fix the planes. Ha Ha... That is almost always easier said than done given the austere location and time it takes to get the necessary parts shipped. So the quick and easy fix is to swap a prop from "Avion de Leaky" and put it on "Avion de Destroyed Propeller." The Mechanics proceeded to tear the props off both airplanes and replaced the damaged prop with a useable one from Leaky. This at least allows me to keep the guys flying every three or four days, until we can get replacement parts in for what is now the hangar queen.
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A quick shot of "AdDP" between engine runups after having the propeller replaced. If you look closely, you can see the LH engine propeller is uncowled for ease of access to make the necessary adjustments of the "Primary low pitch stop". All went off without a hitch. Rich and I had a late evening with the Mechanics, but a serviceable propeller is on and the airplane (and pilots) can continue to fly...crisis averted for now.
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After a late night of assisting the Mechanics with Runups and other necessary items to prepare for the following day, we were back in the saddle at sunrise for a quick MX test flight. It went off without a hitch and I was able to thoroughly enjoy a flight without the myriad stressors of a normal working flight. Scratch that, only one stressor left...does the propeller work like it's supposed to?

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No, this isn't trick photography and I didn't try to time the prop blades to pass through my camera view and snap the picture at the perfect time. The final test to conduct (that which would fully ensure airworthiness of our faithful steed) is to perform a full feather shutdown of the engine on which the prop was installed. "Feather" is a term we use to identify the blade position that is most aerodynamically advantageous should the engine decide that it doesn't want to share in the workload of keeping us aloft. In essence, the blades get turned into the relative flow of the airstream just as pictured here. Aerodynamically speaking, if the prop were to continue to move with no power from the engine to drive it, it would be the aerodynamic equivalent of a large disk, causing immense amounts of drag on affected side of the aircraft. So having a propeller completely stopped is...a good thing.

Baddle Damage Assessment (BDA):

One airplane down:

-No Prop

-No Fuel Tank

-Gathering dust

One airplane airworthy

8 bored pilots

4 frustrated mechanics

$10,000 worth of Propeller to replace

$2,000 worth of Fuel Tanks to replace

On the bright side, we've still got air conditioning in our rooms and lots of food courtesy of the US Army...and an abundance of books and movies...

Chuck Norris...Out...