How airplanes are made.

Lou wrote:
Has anyone seen the show "How It's Made"? It's on the Discovery
Channel. They had a segment on Diamond Aircraft.
It was quite interesting to show the fiberglass and carbon sections
being made and then assembled. They also showed the engine install
and some avionics. Unfortunatly it was extremly short. Now I know I've
been doing it wrong. They just proved it only takes about 8 minutes to
build a plane.
Lou


I know several people who've gone to work at Diamond in London, Ontario
and moved on after a while. It has a rep as a tough place to work with
a fairly high turnover. They push their engineering staff really hard.
50-60 hour weeks with no overtime during on the Djet development program.

On the other hand there is a great employee flying club where you can
rent the company products cheap.

John

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:31:45 -0500, "J.Kahn"
wrote:

Lou wrote:
Has anyone seen the show "How It's Made"? It's on the Discovery
Channel. They had a segment on Diamond Aircraft.
It was quite interesting to show the fiberglass and carbon sections
being made and then assembled. They also showed the engine install
and some avionics. Unfortunatly it was extremly short. Now I know I've
been doing it wrong. They just proved it only takes about 8 minutes to
build a plane.
Lou


I know several people who've gone to work at Diamond in London, Ontario
and moved on after a while. It has a rep as a tough place to work with
a fairly high turnover. They push their engineering staff really hard.
50-60 hour weeks with no overtime during on the Djet development program.

Typically, degreed positions don't pay overtime.
I worked for 26 years in instrumentation, quite, earned a Bachelors
degree in Computer Science and was never paid overtime again. OTOH the
wages were supposed to make up for it.

At the end of nearly 7 years I retired. The company paid me for about
90 days of unused vacation. During those 7 years a typical week was
about 60 hours and I took a total of 3 days off except for my last
work week which was spent at Oshkosh, so I retired during the middle
of the 96 fly-in. (working on computers in the homebuilders center)

On the other hand there is a great employee flying club where you can
rent the company products cheap.


John
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Roger wrote:
On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:31:45 -0500, "J.Kahn"
wrote:

Lou wrote:
Has anyone seen the show "How It's Made"? It's on the Discovery
Channel. They had a segment on Diamond Aircraft.
It was quite interesting to show the fiberglass and carbon sections
being made and then assembled. They also showed the engine install
and some avionics. Unfortunatly it was extremly short. Now I know I've
been doing it wrong. They just proved it only takes about 8 minutes to
build a plane.
Lou

I know several people who've gone to work at Diamond in London, Ontario
and moved on after a while. It has a rep as a tough place to work with
a fairly high turnover. They push their engineering staff really hard.
50-60 hour weeks with no overtime during on the Djet development program.

Typically, degreed positions don't pay overtime.
I worked for 26 years in instrumentation, quite, earned a Bachelors
degree in Computer Science and was never paid overtime again. OTOH the
wages were supposed to make up for it.

At the end of nearly 7 years I retired. The company paid me for about
90 days of unused vacation. During those 7 years a typical week was
about 60 hours and I took a total of 3 days off except for my last
work week which was spent at Oshkosh, so I retired during the middle
of the 96 fly-in. (working on computers in the homebuilders center)

On the other hand there is a great employee flying club where you can
rent the company products cheap.

John
Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

I think that tends to be a smaller company thing. The engineers at my
employer, the leading regional jet manufacturer, get OT unless they are
management (who get annual bonuses).

John

On Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:48:37 -0500, "J.Kahn"
wrote:


On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:31:45 -0500, "J.Kahn"
For some strange reason I was unable to quote from your post, but...

I worked for a large multi-national corporation with sites in at least
5 countries. I'd guess we had between 500 and 700 engineers. They pay
hourly overtime, but not salary.

As they used to say in the new employee orientation. "We're known as a
high pressure work place. Those of you who had been planning on IPR
might want to reconsider you choice of work place.". IPR = "In Plant
Retirement".:-))

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

On Feb 7, 7:31 pm, "J.Kahn" wrote:
Lou wrote:
Has anyone seen the show "How It's Made"? It's on the Discovery
Channel. They had a segment on Diamond Aircraft.
It was quite interesting to show the fiberglass and carbon sections
being made and then assembled. They also showed the engine install
and some avionics. Unfortunatly it was extremly short. Now I know I've
been doing it wrong. They just proved it only takes about 8 minutes to
build a plane.
Lou

I know several people who've gone to work at Diamond in London, Ontario
and moved on after a while. It has a rep as a tough place to work with
a fairly high turnover. They push their engineering staff really hard.
50-60 hour weeks with no overtime during on the Djet development program.

On the other hand there is a great employee flying club where you can
rent the company products cheap.

John

John,

I think that is pretty endemic in the GA industry. Lower pay than
other industries (including commercial and military aircraft/avionics
companies) and longer hours. Margins are pretty thin in GA, and
companies also tend to take advantage of individuals who are
enthusiastic about aviation and being part of something that they
think is cool. Eventually, those people burn out and lose that
enthusiasm. After that, they realize that they can do better
financially and work-life balance-wise doing something else, so they
move on...

Dean