Menasco

25th March, 1985

A few days before that flight home, and one of the reasons why I was so affected by things, was an interview at Menasco, Burbank.

It felt like walking around an enlarged APPH factory, they had all the usual shop areas, yet their manufacturing area was set up in a far more automated fashion, I had never seen such a huge milling machine as the Cincinatti Milacron that the stress guy showed me, the shop floor felt vast, the machinery and the facility was very impressive.

I think they were manufacturing the space shuttle nose landing gear and the test facility was equally advanced, instrumentation and data acquisition that we would not have at APPH for years.

The main man was Ray Crawley, the head of the structural group I believe. I took along some of my FEA plots and my T45TS proposal work and the two hour interview went very well, in fact, at the end of the interview he said that they would offer me a job and I should start the process with the consulate in the UK.

It was all about paperwork...