Progress

It became a very good habit in early 1987 to go swimming at lunch time, it not only took away the temptation to go to the on-site social club at APPH but also provided much needed exercise and stopped the afternoon dozing sessions.

I think I mentioned before that the custom room that was constructed, with ambient lighting and venetian blinds, was a sleep inducing haven during the day, it was a constant battle to keep your eyes open during FEA work, the lighting, the low level hum of the equipment and the heat generated resulted in a very cozy area.

I was working with Matt Hilliard, we were not only working on FEA on the JAS 39 main fitting but also developing 3D point rotation software for our own version of a kinematic program.

The office was once again changing as CAD was being introduced, probably encouraged by McDonnell Douglas for support on the T45TS program, and the guys over the last year or so were being pigeon holed into disciplines, FEA expert, Reliability expert and soon to be CAD monkey/jockey experts.

Indirectly, this labelling and progress resulted in a lot of the "young" crowd, approaching the dreaded age of thirty, to be attractive to the outside world.