Tulio wrote:
The Boeing 747, the 720, the 727 and I believe, a DC-9, are all located at an FAA facility on the West end of the airfield.
The 747 has the following lettering on the fuselage:
FAA - AANC / NDI Test Bed Aircraft
and it is in front of a hangar with the sign:
NDI Validation Center.
The 720 probably has a similar lettering on the fuselage, but when I saw them on October 23, 2005 it was already too dark and they were too far for me to be able to clearly distinguish the 720's lettering.
Saludos,
Tulio
Hi All,
With respect, I wouldn't have thought that the Air Force would be doing NDI/NDT testing on 727, DC9, or 747 (as the USAF I believe only has the the few for Air Force One and the airborne laser project), these are all civilian jet liners and the FAA would be doing Aging Aircraft metallurgy/NDI/NDT testing on the airframes. The 707 is a different matter, while still in military service, the USAF may be profiling alot of the NDI/NDT testing on those airframes.
But, for the most part Boeing and McDonnell/Douglas (now Boeing) develops most of the new techniques in NDI/NDT found in use today. The FAA really doesn't do a whole lot of their own validation on these techniques. However, the FAA tends to like to have the final sign-off on any major type inspections. The FAA does quite abit of what they call POD studies with regard to NDI/NDT...POD meaning Probability of Detection, and they have a research center at Ames Iowa where basically pure research is done. I hate to say this, but, the FAA usually hands off the ball to the MFG and then signs off on the technique and the employment thereof in process. I know this because the airline for which I worked was a huge recipient of MFG testing, and I worked quite often with Engineers and NDI/NDT Technicians from both Boeing, McDonnell Douglas (prior to being bought) and Airbus. We used to do a lot of "debugging" of new inspections for the MFG prior to them becoming "in service" to the rest of the industry.
Just my two cents,
Paul
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