Posts Tagged ‘maintenance’
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When it comes to humor and comedy, timing is everything. And, as so often, I really sympathize with Chuck here, because I couldn’t tell a joke right if my life depended on it. Considering the job I have, this may sound pretty counterintuitive, but it’s true! Ask my friends and family. Maybe that’s why I like the format of comics so much to express myself, because when you draw a comic strip, you can calmly think about it and re-work the wording a hundred times before you put it on paper. And then it stands for itself, even giving the reader the opportunity to read his own timing and emphases into the text. And now imagine some final thought, preferably also including a pun, that rounds up this blog and brings it into a logical conclusion. That’s also not one of my strong points, it seems!
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I’m a rather frugal person. But being frugal doesn’t mean to always go for the cheapest option. Quite to the contrary, usually it makes sense to spend the extra buck on a quality product that will last a lifetime. That doesn’t mean you always have the budget for that though. When I started out living on my own, I got myself as complete a set of tools as I could, which was only possible by going for the cheapest version of each. Now I slowly replace them with quality tools, and I really learned to appreciate the difference that quality makes! Unlike Chuck, or my brother, I always buy cheap sunglasses though. But that’s because I ineviatbly lose or scratch or sit on them within a few weeks. If I was a pilot, I’m sure I’d also get some quality sunglasses.
With this strip you are officially looking at one of my all-time favorite strips we have ever made! It was a lot of fun to come up with real sounding and somewhat plausible technical expressions and we now know how the actors on “The Big Bang Theory” must feel.
Although we’re amazed afterwards about how quick Chuck and Julio are on their feet when it comes to avoiding work. We think they might have rehearsed this conversation a time or two before …
It took us at least a half hour of research, although I have to admit that there was a lot of giggling involved.
And speaking of giggling: I also remember that our dear friend Rob, the “Tumbling Bear”, laughed at this strip literally all day. His wife kept texting me “he is STILL laughing!” 
For today we’ve dug out another classic from many years ago. I’ve never been on a maintenance flight before, but I assume it is like in many other situations in life. If you pay close attention to detail, strange sounds etc. you will suddenly notice all kind of things that make you wish you had never paid close attention in the first place …
Hey, I just thought we could make our own list here too! I’ll start: If I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me why Chuck has only three stripes on his shirt, I’d have enough money to go and see a movie!
This one is another one of those strips written by real life. I don’t remember exactly what we were doing. I think it was a tester of some sort and we were doing something a little more complicated than checking a battery. (Forgive me for not remembering the details but this was 8 years ago and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast today).
I was in the cockpit and another mechanic was hooking everything up like Julio is in this strip and what is written in this strip is exactly what happened. It took us a little while to figure out how to work our test equipment properly and tech reps were called upon but we figured the problem out eventually. At least that’s how I remember it.
And so we were also watching the show “Pimp my Ride” back in the day and the question came up why they would never pimp out an airplane. Maybe it’s because there are no STCs for chrome exhausts, footprint pedals, low profile tires, or chain-link yokes out there.
We may never know for sure. But at least Chuck found a way to get around those pesky FAA approvals…
Have you guys ever taken something apart and then put it back together without finding of fixing anything and then, magically, it started working again?
I have, but it usually doesn’t work that way on aircraft. In fact, it usually tends to go the other way even. When you take the valve covers off on a Cessna 172, you need to install new gaskets. Especially when they have the cork gaskets on them and the last guy torqued them up pretty hard and installed them dry. They rip and tear and it’s usually a mess which you have to carefully clean up before installing new gaskets.
Something tells me that’s where Chuck might have failed…
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The older I get, the less of a perfectionist I become. Especially when renovating our house last year, I learned another lesson of compromising between achieving perfection and getting things done. I have this slightly OCD type of personality that kinda runs in the family, and sometimes catch myself doing things in a way that I know are highly inefficient, but I just can’t help myself!
I think the highest level of enlightenment to achieve is to know when to be a perfectionist and when to go for the “easy way”. (Although the answer to that question does not always come from inside, especially when your wife has a different perception of what constitutes an adequate level of perfection when cleaning the house, *cough cough*).
Personally, all I have to deal with is the paperwork for my car and house. Oh, and taxtes etc. But whenever I drop by at Mike’s office, I can see the tons and tons of folders and manuals that come with operating a helicopter. It’s amazing! Of course, those are complicated and sensitive machines and it’s good that there are regulations in place for them. But it’s one of the less known facts that you probably spend more time in the office than in the cockpit as a helicopter pilot.
Oh, and you can’t read it, because the image is scaled down for our website, but at the sheet in the bottom right corner it says “Caution! Wear protective gloves when operating screwdriver!”
