Word: preflight
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Chin-ups & Blivits. Like all other SAC operations, the airborne alert routine is fenced by narrow restrictions and standardized procedures. Briefing is held a week prior to scheduled takeoff. On take-off day, other crews run through the three-hour preflight checks on the alert bomber to lessen the fatigue of the crew going on duty. Take-offs are scheduled for around 10 a.m. to allow for a full night's sleep. (The crewmen's physical condition is attested by the fact that they must be able to run a reasonably fast 250-yd. dash and perform five...
...dainty, needle-nosed F-104A Starfighter, a silvery sliver of jet aircraft with short (7½ ft.), knife-edged wings. Johnson checked the plane carefully: 5,000 Ibs. of fuel, no armament, a special package of instruments whose faces stared at a 35-mm. movie camera. His preflight check done, "Scrappy" Johnson "just got into the plane and took off." Mission: a new high-altitude record...
...coveralled pilot got notice of the alert when the warning light went on over the Catholic chapel altar, where he was at prayer.) Down premarked roadways they headed for their planes, where ground crews were already at work. Methodically they went down their take-off check lists (the long preflight checks had been done hours before, were done anew daily) and got ready to take off with a whine and a roar. Opening padlocked metal containers and black satchels, the combat crews checked the emergency war plans they had learned by heart in daily briefings...
...schedule, and the company cannot expand its $100 million bank credit, Boeing will be forced into a major production slowdown, says senior Vice President Wellwood E. Beall. Boeing is already closing its 1500-worker plant at Everett, Wash.; it has chopped employee overtime, temporarily abandoned a new preflight hangar at Moses Lake, Wash., reduced its shop supply inventory, and cancelled its Christmas party this year...
...designers tried to make great leaps into supersonics, and crashed short of the mark. U.S. planemakers usually test every part of a new plane in metallurgical laboratories, wind tunnels, etc. before it flies. But British designers, partly because of a shortage of facilities, build a complete plane, skimp on preflight tests. On top of that, they generally build only one to three prototypes; thus when a bug is discovered, the entire test program must be halted until the fault is corrected. The U.S., on the other hand, builds prototypes in batches of ten or more...