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Subject:Re: A Day in Technical Documentation History From:Rick Lippincott <rjl6955 -at- gmail -dot- com> To:Bee Hanson <beelia -at- pacbell -dot- net> Date:Thu, 26 May 2016 06:24:17 -0400
Bee Hanson said:
>My team's 40,000+ pages of documentation were in the cockpit...
Good placement. Sounds a bit more convenient than on the C-5, where
(when they were still paper) only manuals directly related to flight
were in the cockpit. The rest of the ones they carried were on a pair
of deck-mounted racks immediately aft of the second bunkroom, forward
of the first galley.
(And for those of you not familiar with the C-5, I am not making this up.)
Last time I was up in that area was a couple of years ago, the racks
are still there but empty. It's all digital now.
--Rick Lippincott
On 5/26/16, Bee Hanson <beelia -at- pacbell -dot- net> wrote:
> I worked for MDC in the late 80s, not for the DC-10, but for the C-17, which
> is still flying.
> My team's 40,000+ pages of documentation were in the cockpit, which by now
> they have certainly digitized. But it's such a huge cargo plane that extra
> weight would hardly have mattered.
> I don't believe any of those planes ever crashed (after first flight), but I
> can't take credit for it. The whole program was run by the DoD - a military
> project that was apparently successful.
> Who woulda thunk it.
> Bee
>
> On Wednesday, May 25, 2016 7:41 PM, William Sherman
> <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
>
> Unfortunately, history is often created by incredibly sad or horrible
> events. Today in 1979, that pretty much describes it. American Airlines
> Flight 191 crashed after take off at O'Hare International Airport in
> Chicago. A total of 273 people lost their lives as a result, the deadliest
> aviation accident in the US.
>
> A coworker was only a couple of miles from the airport on that day and saw
> the smoke all rise up when it happened.He says he will never forget it.
>
> How this ties to technical documentation is that it saved the company that
> built that plane, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10. Initially blamed as a poor
> design and as such, all liability would come on McDonnell Douglas, it was
> found that MDC had fully documented the correct method of removing and
> installing the wing engines and that American Airlines and others were using
> an unauthorized shortcut. As such, MDC was not held responsible.
>
> Hopefully, your documentation will never be tested under such horrible
> conditions, but please make sure it will stand up to such scrutiny.
>
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