The Aloha 737 accident in Hawaii, where a large section of the Ford fuselage came off the airplane in flight.

The fuselage at the left joints for the upper and lower stands just unzipped.

Black lights and broomsticks, stress and strain, weight versus strength, non-destructive testing, and firing frozen chickens at fighter jet canopies.

Well, if these topics excite you, then you came to the right place because that's what's in store for you this week on the Fighter Pilot podcast.

Hello and welcome to the show. I am your usual host, Vincent Ayelo, but as you regular listeners know, every so often I need a break and turn the microphone over to a co-host who pursues different subjects of interest and this week is more of that.

Our friend and former U.S. Air Force flight test engineer Ken Katz is back with a technical discussion on non-destructive testing and other processes used to ensure complex and costly military aircraft remain airworthy from design

throughout their service life. This isn't a shoot down story or the latest salacious headline, but for those of you who like to nerd out, you're in for a treat on this one and I'll be back with you again next week.

All right, prime time, take it away.

Aircraft needs strong and light structures in order to achieve high performance.

Today, we're going to be joined by engineer Tim Cancella, who's going to be talking to us about aircraft structures and how they're inspected. Welcome, Tim.

Thanks, Ken. Pleasure to be here. Appreciate it.

Well, it's been enjoyable talking with you over the last few months and finally we're going to put together an episode.

Yeah, finally. We're going out.

Now, before we start, we'd like to begin our federal pilot podcast episodes with an introduction to who you are. So please tell us about your education, your experience, what you're doing today.

Sure. I've always been associated with interested in whatever aerospace. My dad worked for a company called Cleveland & Medic Tool that back in the, I guess, 50s, 60s, 70s Made Landing gear for almost everything that flew.

And my brother became an Air Force maintenance officer, so I always wanted to do that kind of thing.

I wound up going to the University of Cincinnati, got a BS in physics.

My roommate at the time was an aerospace engineer and he became, became, I guess, Captain Mark Sweeney, Navy Captain.

And he retired as a test pilot and a vice commander point to go and a commander Pacific test wing and so forth.

It was really interesting having an engineer and a physics major together hanging out together and whatnot.

We both, we still tell stories about going out with our girlfriends at the time now wives.

And the aerospace engineer and the physicist just could not figure out 15% of the tip and they had to do it.

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