I'm back, my devoted Cake Eater readers.
I know. You were missing me, right? You could barely get through the day without me and my incredibly wise and informative posts, right? You're breathing a sigh of relief that I'm back at the keyboard this fine and chilly Monday morning, right?
Heh. {wink, wink, nudge, nudge}
Whilst you were gorging yourself on turkey and all the assorted side dishes, the husband and I were doing the same. Only in Texas, where the husband's family now resides. His sister and her family moved there about a year and a half ago, and his parents followed her shortly thereafter. Grandparents and Grandkiddies have been reunited and all is well in the Ft. Worth suburbs. We got around to visiting them over the holiday ("It's about time, too!" according to my mother-in-law, who sometimes forgets that airways and highways go in both directions and are not, in fact, one way.) and had a good time seeing everyone and getting caught up while eating way entirely too much food.
Two eventful things happened whilst we were in Tejas. First off, it appears we had to travel to Texas to get our first taste of snow. Yes, that's right. It snowed. In Texas. On Thanksgiving day. The kids were ecstatic and soaked completely by the time darkness fell. Second, my brother-in-law works as a computer enginerd for Lockheed Martin, and he was kind enough to take us on a tour of the manufacturing facilities for the building he works in. This building is one of five or six---and they're each well over a mile long, but, as the brother-in-law informed us, weren't quite big enough to get this particular bomber out the door without having to maneuver the wings in a diagonal fashion.
It was very cool to see how they put the planes together and how they have the manufacturing processes organized. In my brother-in-law's building we got to see F-16 wings being put together, the mid-section of an F-22 Raptor being readied for shipping to another Lockheed plant in Georgia and, wonder of wonders and EASILY the coolest thing of the day, an F-35 being wired up. I should also mention this was the very first F-35 with STOVL capabilities that was being constructed, right in front of our very eyes.
Which was suh-weet, my devoted Cake Eater readers.
The brother-in-law was disappointed that the engines weren't out on display, too. They had been the week before, but no longer. We weren't disappointed at all because what we got to see was impressive enough in itself. Apparently, in the next couple of weeks it will be finished. Everyone who was working on wiring it up was "The A Team" according to the brother-in-law, because it was the first. They've been working around the clock, evidently, to get it ready for its first flight. Supposedly, in a few years they're going to produce one F-35 a day at this facility. While that was hard to imagine, I suppose they'll manage to get it done. If nothing else, it was an interesting experience in seeing my tax dollars at work. The sheer number of people and material they need to put one of these things together---and keep in mind this is with automated processes that are much more efficient than those of years past---is astonishing.
So, if you know someone who works at Lockheed and can get you in the door, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I would highly recommend the experience. It was very, very cool to see the end result of the Joint Strike Fighter competition.
Posted by Kathy at November 26, 2007 10:22 AM | TrackBack