Aerospace manufacturing: February 2010 Archives

Finally got my first visit to Airbus's Getafe facility a few miles south of Madrid today and, even though obviously I'm currently biased towards my primary employer, it's hard not to be impressed by the ultra-leading-edge composites and other manufacturing technology there.

Obviously the pride of Getafe right now is the magnificent beast shown below refuelling an itsy-bitsy Boeing E-3F AWACS. In the refuelling community, as I've been learning, the very occasional hairy things that happen usually involve tanking to large aircraft rather than to fighters. So topping up the AWACS, with its dorsal radome, has given everyone a lot of satisfaction. Particularly as it so happened that when the loaned AWACS turned up at the rendezvous it did in fact need refuelling for real so the first 'trial' was actually done in anger.