A static test aircraft and pieces of the first four of five planned flight test aircraft for the Cessna Citation Longitude are coming together on a makeshift assembly line inside the formerly empty bay of a Textron Aviation building known as Plant III.
As part of the newly-christened “East Campus”, Textron Aviation inherited the building when Cessna acquired Hawker Beechcraft in 2014. Half of Plant III contains a composite manufacturing complex, with autoclaves large enough to contain the full wingspan of a midsize business jet. The other half of the plant used to be an empty, roughly 500,000ft<sup>2</sup> bay Hawker Beechcraft used as a parts warehouse.
Following the acquisition, Textron Aviation repainted the grimy ceiling a glossy white, replaced dim overhead bulbs with fluorescent light and installed a modern, slip-resistant floor. Voila: the dingy warehouse was transformed into Textron Aviation’s experimental final assembly line with the sole mission of assembling test articles for the company’s latest products.
“What we have is a product development machine,” says Ron Draper, Textron Aviation’s senior vice-president for integrated supply chain.
The transformation of Plant III encapsulates Textron Aviation’s straightforward product strategy. The company’s goal is to deliver new products faster and more efficiently than the competition. That means outsourcing as little production work as possible. Most of the structural assembly task, from tooling to landing gear to wings, is designed, fabricated and tested in Textron Aviation factories.
Last September Plant III was virtually empty, containing a few pieces of tooling and, somehow, the first completed static test article for the Longitude programme, trucked to Las Vegas in November to be put on display for the annual NBAA convention.
Plant III looks very different today. An assembly line runs nearly the full-length of the bay, with partially completed wings in the right foreground, partially assembled fuselage sections in the left foreground and, further back, a maze of tooling dedicated to other sections of the aircraft.
FTA-1, the first static test article, is in the most advanced assembly position, with the fuselage nearly completed. The first set of wings is already complete and undergoing vibration testing at another site. They will be returned to Plant III and joined to the fuselage later, supporting a first flight planned for this summer.
The first flying prototype, nicknamed “proto” in Textron Aviation nomenclature, is right behind FTA-1. Pieces of the next three flight test vehicles – P-1, P-2 and P-3 – are also in advanced stages of assembly. The fifth and final test aircraft, P-4, is entering the assembly stream at a later date.
Meanwhile, workers are assembling the wings for the flying prototype. Rigged up in a vertical tooling structure, visitors could count the two-spar, nine-stringer and 14-rib assembly. If the Longitude wing design looks familiar, it is. The 28.6˚ wing-sweep and the loft contours of the similarly sized Hawker 4000 were repackaged to suit the Longitude, although the high-lift system and manufacturing process are completely different.
A Kuka-branded robot lies near the wing assembly machine, partially unpacked from its shipping container. The machine will be used to drill holes in the wing panels of the Longitude, replicating increasing levels of drilling automation in Cessna-branded jets, says Chet Thorne, Textron Aviation’s engineering director for jet aircraft.
Vertical assembly tools are everywhere in Plant III. Tall blue tooling rigs rise high off the floor, with integrated scissor lifts raising and lowering workers to the exact spot they need to work. This is another recent innovation with Textron Aviation. The company used vertical assembly tools in other programmes, such as the Citation Latitude, but dramatically expanded their use with the Longitude programme, Draper says.
While the wing owes a legacy to the Hawker 4000, the fuselage is all Cessna Citation. Looking at a completed aft fuselage assembly section, Thorne estimated the only major difference on the Longitude are the attachment fittings for the jet’s bespoke engines – Honeywell HTF7700 turbofans.
The development of the fuselage is proceeding on schedule, but not all of the systems are visible yet inside Plant III. At other Textron Aviation sites in Wichita, a series of test rigs are putting the electronic systems through safety of flight checks. An iron bird is commissioned, testing the first application of a fly-by-wire rudder and electronically actuated spoilers in a Citation jet.
Another innovation developed for the Longitude is a unique power transfer control unit (PTCU). Normally a system used to transfer hydraulic power between two lines contains three major components: a pump, motor and controller. Textron Aviation developed an integrated PTCU for the Longitude, which is also installed in a test rig, Thorne says.
The Longitude’s home in Plant III is designed to be temporary. Once the flight test articles are complete, some of the tooling will be transferred to Plant IV, a three-bay structure elsewhere on East Campus that houses production of the Beechcraft King Air, Baron and Bonanza. For the first time in Wichita history, a jet bearing the surname of Clyde Cessna will be assembled in the house built by Walter Beech. The King Air line has already been moved from the central bay of Plant IV to the East Bay, making room for the Longitude.
To accommodate the 5.92m (19ft 5in)-tall Longitude, Textron Aviation is raising the top of the door just beyond the last position of final assembly, allowing the twinjet to roll out to the runway. Textron Aviation will then fly the Longitude to “West Campus”, also known as the Cessna factory, for interior installation.
By that time, the Longitude programme will be fully installed inside Plant IV, but Plant III will still not be empty. The next aircraft programme in the Cessna Citation Jet pipeline – the Hemisphere – will probably be its next occupant. Once the Hemisphere moves into rate production, it, too, could be moved to another, still-undesignated site, leaving Plant III open to accept whatever comes next in Textron Aviation’s product pipeline.
Source: Flight Daily News
