A Ticking Box

I've just read an entire month of my diary for the August of 1994 and I obviously had difficulty at the time coming to terms with the fact that I had to work rather hard to gather my jobshopper dollars at the landing gear emporium.

Yet, the diary is full of light and they were indeed happy times regardless of the workload, and it was apparent that in quite an uncontrolled way, things were predominantly under control.

I had finished two different types of spectrum reduction programs, one for the FractuREsearch damage tolerance program from Mister Broek and the other for quick spreadsheet fatigue checks of various fibres on the periphery of sections. At the time the Menasco fatigue program was limited to a single fibre, so my spreadsheet could accelerate the identification of the critical zone and we could hone in.

If my stress concentration factors were correct...

I say things were predominantly under control as the design office were having some major issues with the drawing schedule for the upcoming CDR and it seemed that in the great scheme of things, a drawing of a washer carried the same weight in the schedule as a major structural component. It was a game of numbers for them, and with the strength, fatigue and damage tolerance analysis, it was a game of numbers for me.

I've said before about the DTA presentation for the CDR being more of a theoretical or "paper" report to tick the box, as with the percentage of completed drawings requirement box, that the number crunchers at both ends were busy trying to satisfy each other so that they could report back to their superiors that everything was on track.

It was true though, that in the September of 1994, everything was predominantly on track for the program, it was the happiest of times because of one major thing.

Nothing had gone wrong yet.