"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
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"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
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It's kind of long, but the radio traffic is interesting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZw...eature=related


I will never understand why such a powerful engine should be disturbed by
eating a bird. OK...not "never", but right now, I don't understand.



In 1983 the company I worked for received a contract to design and build a
vacuum coating system to deposit thin film strain gauges and thermocouples
(temperature monitoring instrumentation) on the fan blades used on Pratt and
Whitney jet engines. When the system was delivered to Florida (ironically
only about 15 miles from where we had a house down there a many years later)
I went down to supervise the start-up and commissioning of the system.

I got a tour of the P&W's facility. One room was particularly interesting.
About 20 people sat at workstations, holding and gently feeling the fan
blades that are part of the compression stage of a jet engine. The engineer
who was giving me the tour explained that all the people in the room were
blind. They were using their extraordinary sense of "feel" to inspect the
cast and machined blades for any irregularities because a minor defect could
lead to a catastrophic engine failure.

Eisboch