Everything under control
My favorite part of this strip is the word exchange in the first two panels and also Chucks look in the second panel. It always amazes me what my brother can do with Chuck’s facial expressions even though you never see his eyes. As far as the tape goes, we do use high-speed tape for little fixes in the airline industry, although not for closing cabin doors.
I also want to mention something about our website. We are aware that our navigation for the strip archives does not work properly most of the time anymore. My brother has spent countless hours already trying to come up with a fix. Our platform might be getting too old. The text links to the previous and next comic underneath the blog still work, and you can still click on “archives” and select every strip individually. But there is some sort of issue with the arrows for “previous” and “next”.
While we’re working on repairing it, I will add a bunch of our older classic strips to our Patreon site (see link below our comics) so you guys can browse at your leisure.
Mike
There seems to be a rash of archives breaking of late.
I may have mentioned it here before, but one Sunday, while working at the FOB, one of their former 172s came in with damage. A Pipeline runner company now owned the plane and the pilot had a bird strike. Turkey Vulture, likely, and it stove in the wing from the cap in about 3-4 feet. He borrowed the crew car and ran to a hardware store and bought duct tape, hoping the FAA guy didn’t wander over to look at things. His tape job was quite lacking, so I took the roll and started in making it closer to aerodynamic. He said “You look like you’ve done this before.” I replied “Yes, but the wing was upside down and on a Sprint Car.”
He had said it wasn’t much noticeable to begin with, just feeling a bit out of trim from wind or something, but just had to make sure he could get back to the home field without losing the cap and light.
I’ve actually done this, though perhaps a little less directly. Flying Young Eagles in a beater Cessna 172, the door popped open every flight. Figured out that the exterior latch handle would sit part way out, and was oriented like a scoop, and took hardly any force to pop the door open, little enough that air pressure would open it. So a little packing tape over the handle kept it closed, could still open from the inside. Made sure to use transparent tape so the parents whos kids I was about to take for a ride didn’t notice!
Most aspects of Cessnas have stayed fairly similar over the years, but it seems that there are as many designs of door latch as Cessna aircraft I’ve flown. And none of them worked right. Seems like that’s a point of struggle, though I have to give them credit that they keep trying, maybe eventually they’ll find a design that works.
Heh, familiar situation, even if the “Red Green repair strategy” sometimes can be a valid last resort, if done with some afterthought. I run a small electrical test workshop – I always keep duct tape and other effective adhesives under lock and key to avoid having to “clean up” after well-meaning vistors/users who “Just wanted to make sure noone pulled that cable” or similar (I usually have better solutions than taping stuff down to floors/equipment/tables etc.). I don’t always succeed in time tho…
Hint for tape removal: Odorless kerosene (Or Jet-A1 if Chuck prefers the “scent” 😉 ). Works for most types of tape or other non-oilresistant glue residue. Rip off the tape as best possible, apply kerosene with a rag or brush for a visibly wet surface without having it run everywhere. Maybe “scratch” into the glue in a crisscross pattern with something that won’t scratch the paint underneath like a plastic spatula, plastic gift card etc. to help the kerosene get into the glue.
Leave for a few minutes to let the volatile parts of the kerosene react with the glue. It sort of gums up and gets more gooey. Scrape glue goo off with a plastic spatula, gift card or simular to not scratch surface. The really neat trick: The oily parts of the kerosene will keep the released glue from reattaching to the surface to clean. Repeat as required.
Knock yourselves out :D.
In the latter days of the English Electric Canberra (the origin of the B57 for you Americans, cracks appeared in the top surfaces of the wing skins. Airframe Engineers stop-drilled and marked the ends of the cracks with wax pencils, and if the crack did not propagate, they just inspected the wing surface regularly. However, the aircrew objected to looking out and seeing cracks, so the cracks were covered with duct tape and painted after each inspection. Problem solved.
Mo.