Well i dont really like melbourne…and i really dont like it now since all i do there is bloody well work….

Arrived down here on the Monday on a morning flight which was uneventful except for the usual jammed in knees and cramps…..curse the small seat pitch on virgins jets…Spent most of monday and tuesday establishing where we are up to in the projet (which is th installation of the Daedulus Line Scanner) and how much stuff the sheeties have pulled out of the aircraft. It seems the project is moving along very quickly and the amount of work we have done currently will be consumed by the sheeties and mintenance guys will be swallowed up fairly quickly. My main job for this project so far has been the Rack installation and the FEA modeling of the pressure box, which has been nothing but painful…mainly due to the requirement of having the ability to retrieve fastener loads from the model, which means there must be beams (BEAM 188) joining keypoints on all of the fastener positions…biggest problem with this is actually modelling the geometry and gett Ansys to do what we want…..key points to remember…

– If drawing in AutoCad ..ensure that all regions line up and there is no strange gaps or misalingments in the regions…which i had to start with….which i painfully removed and check one by one by zooming in to the max to determine if there was any misaligment….

– Find a btter way of generating geometry…..

Once all the data (in the form of a .satfile) was in ansys it was not too bad…..the analysis actually came out real good…and fairly accurate, when compared to hand calcs of Alans….. I have learnt heaps of Ansys during this short time…everytime i use ansys i learn more….

Mental note while i remember…I have 4 days owing now due to the issue of working on Sunday….(3 from last year – 1 this year)

We are staying in lovely Essendon, which seems nice…

will update towards the end of the week…..

Well have been pretty damn flat out the last 3 weeks since my last post.. the CASA212 project is starting to wind up…some memorable moments to look back on:

1) FDR install….convincing Arthur that mounting a FDR at an angle is a bad thing…
2) CVR install…i know where i will be put my scared ass if the plane ever crashes….on the CVR tray….probably match the 3500gs the CVR unit is required to withstand 🙂
3) Gps Centre console mods….Arthur did very well with i must say ..much better than any ideas i had, but i have to say the Proe model was so damn spot on…on one dim was out by 1mm!!

At the last count the drawing sheet count was close to 180 pages….pretty hard core!! Both matt and justin have reviewed the project and looked at the aircraft and seem to be pretty happy with the structural fitout, the only issue that was raised was the location of the ELT, it is one frame forward of the originbal location, probably could have gone further back, however the regs only specifiy ‘ must be mount as far aft as practable’ or something like that, so it is not really an issue. Againif want to tie down ur ski-doo or quad bike, u could probably use the ELT mount….darn strong…

‘If u can’t pick the aircraft from it, it ‘aint strong enough’!!

Well i definitely adhere to that philosphy (spelling), i seem to be getting a reputation for making things a little over engineered and strong…rather be overweight and over engineered then explaining to the magistrate why the thing crashed into a kindy school 🙂

Last night about 11 i was able to take a drive out the airport and get some OK nite shots of the foreshore and a 747 taking off…will have to try that again…speaking of images, i have had the opportunity to get some pix of the smick aircraft in the hangar that the CASA212 is parked in, G5, global express, learjet 60, Falcon 200 ..(thats the crappest one in there!!), unfortuntely the pix are not that great but…hey better than a kick in the ass….

Also found out tonite that one of the autoavia boys has given notice…a shame…definitely gonna result in an increased workload on the rest of us…..

Wonder if we are gonna get our reviews some time this year!!! they are already 4 months over due….probably say something next week…as long as the raise gets back paid, am not too fussed….although there are some issues i would like to raise….

Very busy week at work, mainly to do with the CASA212 Job, although a few extra little jobs thrown in always help in burning up some badly needed time! Went to mascot several time this week, things are happening fairly quickly but not much seems to be confirmed, there is alot of umming and ahhing about the location of units, i feel this will all even out tho as the project moves along.

ELT installation was finalised until the sparky decided ‘no we cant have it there’, thats great, especially after i completely finished the manufacturing and installation drawings for it, grrrr. The hanging shelf for the HF load unit is coming along nicely….a easy one since no can say ‘it cant go there’ (touch wood).

The aircarft is currently in bits, the complete interior and avionics have been stripped out! looks like an absolute dogs breakfast, but i guess the sparkies know whats going on! The aircraf has its first time inspection from CASA on the monday, that should be very interesting since the thing is in bits!!!

Thursday morning at 7am i went for my security clearance, passed the exam and am now considered ‘secure’ woohoo. Thursday was a long day.

Friday started with my first solo flight and ended at Execujet with a cargo-net job for a prominent mans Falcon 200. Bit strange since the bloody things had these nets installed for the last ten years with out any kinda approval. Oh well good way for us to make some money! Ended up doing some more work on the CASA212 while i was at Execujet! Spent most of the time listening to arthur explaining the finer points of his new homebuilt aircraft…i can see this is going to be painful!

Managed to get a look at some of the documentation for the CASA212 ski installation that AEA are doing, all looks pretty hectic! glad i have nothing to do with that!

Met up with Kane (original with WWW @YSBK) who is now doing all the sheet work on the ski install.

Well last thursday was a very interesting day, started at mascot nice and early, first job at Execujet, dealing with the newly arrived CASA212, a MTOW 7700kg multi-role aircraft that will be utilized by the peeps going to the frozen south…nutters. For an aircraf that was manufactured last year it was very rough, i definitely expected it to be much more finished and smick!, its amazing the difference a small amount of finishing off can do to an aircraft, keep in mind these spainards are part of EADS ie the likes of eurocopter!

Nonetheless after a few hours of looking round and getting a preliminary idea of what was going to occur with this aircraft it was time to get lunch. We (Autoavia) are responsible for the structural certification side of things, while our counterparts AEA are responsible for the rest! This probably a good thing since the limited amount of time available to complete the job!

Well lunch finishes and I head over to EAAL for a bit of carpet treatment! U never get out of there quickly…..can spend hours there doing very little, or u get the ‘while ur here can u have a look at this’!! Pretty straightforward carpet replacement, just need to get the guys to chase down those darn FAR 25.853 certs. After a few hours at Eastern it was off to Execujet again to track down a few more details for the CASA212.

Off to bankstown about 4:30pm mainly since i had to go and help Goair setup their supercomputers…talk about overkill. 3 brand spanking new boxes, one server with WinSBS, which i have never used, but hey, no time like the present to start learning!! After a reinstall and some dicking around i was on the way home at about 9:30.

* Fatigue/Structural Report for PL/12 T400 Stub wing Extension
* Engineering Instruction for Continued Operations of DHC-6 with a cracked spar web, wing STA 110.0.
* Structural Report for the Camera Spacer adapter box.

Got the FEA model for the camera spacer adapter to import and run in Ansys….looks good. Remember: export from Proe as a IGES file…export only the surfaces…import straigth into Ansys and it works like a charm!! Unfortunately it takes about an hour to solve….better than the last one tho!

The first work related post…ideally i want this to be merely a record of jobs i do at work, mainly the interesting ones.

I would be nice to look back 6 – 12 months and see what jobs i was working on!

It would have been nice to start earlier…ie when i sarted at Autoavia….but hey…its never to late to start somehting new!!

* Fatigue/Structural Report for PL/12 T400 Stub wing Extension
* Engineering Instruction for Continued Operations of DHC-6 with a cracked spar web, wing STA 110.0.
* Structural Report for the Camera Spacer adapter box.

Got the FEA model for the camera spacer adapter to import and run in Ansys….looks good. Remember: export from Proe as a IGES file…export only the surfaces…import straigth into Ansys and it works like a charm!! Unfortunately it takes about an hour to solve….better than the last one tho!