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Wilbur

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How many more years do you intend to do this flying thing?

Interesting flight test story.  There was a period back around 1990 give or take a couple of years that P&W attempted to use a new fan case on their engine made out of kevlar.  Worked great in the test stands and seemed to be the wave of the future.  About 50 engines had been completed and shipped to Boeing when the first began to hit flight test at the end of the assembly line just before customer delivery.  One of the tests was supposed to be a single engine aborted landing with a go around.  This is accomplished by throttling one engine to idle just before landing.....or just after wheels down, followed by a full power setting on the other and a rotation for the go around.  That's when the problem surfaced.  The fan case flexed too much under the gyroscopic effect of the fan going to full power and the aircraft's rotation and the fan blades hit the case and caused an engine stall.  The crew was faced with the prospect of bringing the other engine up to full power while continuing the take off while hoping that the other engine would not suffer the same fate.  It seems that the flight crews used up a number of uniforms during those few weeks that the kevlar case was in service.  This is how the story was explained to me.  I got it because I was at the receiving and retest of those 50 or so engines as they were flown back to P&W 2 at a time to be rebuilt with conventional fan cases and flown back to Boeing, all at our expense.

Manufacturer flight test sounds like....................not boring.

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