Model Airplanes

Two Navy Super Hornet squadrons at Naval Air Station Lemoore, Calif., have reduced maintenance turnaround times and are boosting aircraft readiness as part of naval aviation’s maintenance reform initiatives under the Naval Sustainment System.

The NSS initiative leverages best practices from commercial industry to help reform aspects of naval aviation’s fleet readiness centers, organizational-level (O-level) maintenance, supply chain, engineering and maintenance organizations and governance processes. Initially, the NSS is concentrating on getting the Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fleet healthy before rolling out the approach to every Navy and Marine Corps aircraft.

Strike Fighter Squadrons (VFA) 22 and 122 were the first to implement O-level maintenance reforms following visits from commercial aviation consultants in December and January.

Reforms include assigning crew leads to manage the maintenance on each aircraft and reorganizing hangar spaces, parts cages and tools.

Squadrons Empower Petty Officers
The most significant change has been the delegation of ownership over each aircraft in for repairs from the squadrons’ maintenance material control officers, or MMCOs, to individual crew leads comprised mostly of first-class petty officers.

Traditionally, MMCOs must keep track of the status of each aircraft in for maintenance as well as the Sailors working on them, and that’s in addition to deciding what maintenance actions are required for each jet and which aircraft are safe to release for flight. Assigning junior-level crew leads to each jet removes some of that burden from the

Article source: http://www.aerotechnews.com/blog/2019/05/06/o-level-reform-lemoore-strike-fighter-squadrons-returning-more-jets-to-flight-line/

Cyanoacrylate (CA)

Often referred to by the brand name Krazy Glue, this class of glue, cyanoacrylate, is the soul of the special effects industry. It was originally formulated as emergency battlefield sutures during the Vietnam War and I know model makers who swear by CA glue for stitch-worthy cuts (I’ve never tried it). Lorne Peterson, one of the original model makers on Star Wars and an old friend, was the one who discovered CA glue as an Eastman Kodak product and introduced it to the ILM model shop. It’s import in the special effects industry cannot be overstated. CA glue is highly versatile and comes in liquid form with varying degrees of viscosity, from the super-thin (very tricky to use right) to the super-thick gap-filling kind, to the newest version, flexible CA glue, which I’m just starting to use, and like a lot. All of them can set when exposed to air or be accelerated by adding a “kicker.” Once set, it becomes a hard acrylic that tends to be brittle, so you want to be careful.

Super-thin CA glue deserves some extra attention here because it’s so thin (like vodka) that it flashes quickly and sets almost instantaneously, way faster than any other CA glue formulation. It’s amazing for things like ceramics, where it can wick into the porous ceramic and leave almost no trace of itself. But if you have your skin anywhere near that crack, it’ll wick underneath your finger and glue you to the very thing you’re trying

Article source: https://www.popsci.com/best-glue-adam-savage

This image taken from a video distributed by Russian Investigative Committee on Sunday, May 5, 2019, shows the Sukhoi SSJ100 aircraft of Aeroflot Airlines on fire, at Sheremetyevo airport, outside Moscow, Russia. At least 40 people died when an Aeroflot airliner burst into flames while making an emergency landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. (The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation via AP) Photocredit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

In 2017, there were a total of 59 deaths attributed to airline accidents. In 2018, there were 561. When I did the math, I was taken aback; deaths attributed to airline accidents had jumped 900% year-over-year. And if present trends are not reversed, it appears that airline deaths will rise further in 2019.

While the absolute number of deaths wasn’t particularly high in 2018 (equivalent to a single A380 jumbo jet crashing, which thankfully, didn’t happen) the percentage increase over the previous year was startling. Experts called 2017 an exceptionally safe year, while 2018 was “only average” in terms of safety. So perhaps the increase can be discounted somewhat—unless fatalities continue to rise.

Unfortunately, that appears to be happening. In 2018, there were 18 jetliner accidents with a total of 561 fatalities. As of May 7, 2019, just a third through the year, there have already been 6 deadly jetliner accidents with 231 fatalities. That projects to nearly 700 airline deaths and would put 2019 on course to become

Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2019/05/07/after-900-increase-in-2019-airline-fatalities-rising-again/