Musical Chairs Part Ducks

I believe it was the Challenger Tail Cone Tank internal loads report that I had to completely redo following one of the "killer tag" checking events, fortunately for me, I could do repeat stuff like that pretty fast so although it subtracted time from the schedule, I could work at "burst" mode to fix my stupid mistakes.

The error I had made was to reference ultimate loads with the limit loads rolling radius curves, so all the dimensions of compressed tires for the side load cases were incorrect, and incorrect in a bad way as the extra load produced more tire stroke which meant the internal loads were unconservative.

Regardless of me messing up that report initially, it was directly due to that experience on the Challenger aircraft that I was enlisted to work on derivatives of the Canadair Regional which was a similar aircraft but with different CG envelope and increased weights. The proposals for various new work came and went and I was busy on the F/A-18 NLG work when Dowty won the project for the next version of the aircraft, plus there was another proposal for the Global Express on the cards.

This was the start of an interesting six months at the tail end of 1993, as Jim Collins, who was our beloved Stress Office Manager, and good friend, retired from that position. Jim was always in his heart a job shopper, and even as the manager of the Stress Office (not the chief) he was quite a laid back individual and we would all enjoy his office banter.

It was sad to see him go.

The new project meant that Dowty needed bums on seats and there was such a huge influx of contractors that it presented a major problem in that busy time.

There were not enough seats for the required bums.