Fix these broken wings – T-38 Wing Repair


Team Edwards members worked together to save the Air Force more than $1 million in repair costs recently at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Airmen from the 412th Maintenance Squadron discovered damages on a T-38 Talon during a 225-hour inspection.

Subscribe to Dr. Justin Imel, Sr. by Email

Transcript

[Owen McCallister] Part of the phase inspection on the T-38 is ultrasonic inspection or Eddy current inspection of the wings. The have about 500 different inspections they do. They found one hole in the wing that was cracked. After going back and forth with engineering often, they basically decided to change the wing. Those new wings that came in are being made in Israel. I believe the price tag was $973,000.00 for the wings. We changed out a few pieces on the fuselage to make it up to speed and what we got is the front two mounts were off by 27 thousandths of an inch. This is about 8 sheets of paper. About the thickness of it. Couldn’t bolt it together so we went back to engineering they gave us an okay to make two offset bushings where you could roll the to the inside. That moved the holes over so they fit the aircraft. The left side went well. The right side was actually gouged by the manufacturer. So we had to make a fixture to open that hole up. Clean it up. Put a new bushing in it. Took about three weeks total. Going back and forth with engineering at Hill. But by the time we were done, you know, it went on very plain, very nice. Lined up great. (music with beeps)

Share with Friends:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.