Attitude Shift

In those first weeks of March, 1985 my attitude changed towards America, it appeared that the people who worked around us in the design office had more focused responsibilities, had a more relaxed way about them and also had a higher standard of living than we British folk.

An example of focused responsibility, in a large company like Douglas, would be a draughstman who was responsible for a certain wing bay including everything that would traverse from one bulkhead to another. However, these responsibilities were supported by secondary MDA wireframe CAD models, constructed by Principal engineers.

Pete Gatehouse was one of these specialists, he would incorporate our landing gear geometry on his "tube" to verify 3D points and also to generate kinematic sweeps of the gear as it retracted.

It was Pete that showed great hospitality to the APPH team and we had several visits to his house for good grub, budweiser and lashings of Chivas Regal. If I compared Pete, and his family, to a similar British one, the American standard of living and engineering status appeared to be a lot higher.