Long Couple of Days

Its the weekend!
Had a lot going on in the office. 2 of the aircraft should now be off on remote sorties, but a lot needed doing before they could go. I got called out onto the apron by my boss at 0730 as we were short staffed today and ended up being out for 5 hours; most of which was spent arguing about the bureaucracy of paperwork. Its quite comical walking into each aircraft's maintenance hut and hearing "Rolls-Royce are in the building", promptly followed by frantic minimising of computer screen. Stupid export law.

Sat in the cockpit for an engine run today in the cabin mock-up aircraft, which is used for noise and vibration tests. Today's run was with off balance fan, running up to 70% thrust. It reminded me of this incident:

http://airlineworld.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/etihad-airbus-slams-into-wall-while-engine-testing/

I was assured that the aircraft was properly choked, but it didn't half rattle.

There's still much talk about who gets to spend Christmas in Ecuador supporting the hot and high flight tests. Apparently the US a having major visa issues; European's don't need one. Boeing are also very worried about security, so the air force are supporting the tests. The weird thing is any time anyone mentions the country in question, I get this stuck in my head:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P86fPsC_cCQ
I had to get a report out by the end of the day so that the UK would see it on Monday morning. This was particularly urgent as I've been asked to work on the second shift next week, so will be working 1400-2200 PST (2200-0600 GMT) thus having no interaction with the UK. At least on first shift there's a 1-2 hour window where you can talk to them.

My amazing discovery of the day was finally managing to translate what the Boeing mechanics were saying. In short, they pronounce "Turbine" as "Turban". This caused much confusion, but did paint interesting pictures in my head; mainly of gas turbans.