Danger Zone

The work on the F/A-18 E/F continued and I was initially responsible for several items in the catapult launch train. In the early stages we were shown a training video, with the previous derivative of the Hornet undertaking launch and arrest. It was exciting stuff.

What was more exciting was my "bad monkey" status seemed to be wearing off and I was being sent out on trips to further the project. It was during one of these trips that I met up again with Ray Rapo and the guys from Cleveland Pneumatic, saw my first Hummer vehicle at the South Bend airport and enjoyed many Dos Equis beers at the American bars once more.

A lot of the work was intense with quite steep learning curves, we were expected to "port" the McDonnell Douglas fatigue program over to the computer system and the processing requirements of their "flight by flight" spectrum required Dowty to invest in a much improved mainframe and hundreds of hours of coding and debugging by the guys.

It was during this time my professional friendship with a McDonnell Douglas structural guy, Ed Nowakowski, started. That relationship, and the overall F/A-18 program rekindled my respect for the American "no BS" type approach, which of course meant that I had to get my personal act together and rein in my bouts of silliness and immaturity.

Another steep learning curve.