The agricultural inspection on our aircraft started this afternoon. No one is allowed on the flightline in civilian attire, so we gave the three inspectors a !set of coveralls each. Embarassingly, the lead inspector is, shall we say, a gentleman of substantial girth. We don't have any coveralls big enough to fit him. So he had it zipped only to the beltline, with quite a bit of him hanging out the front.

There are two Americans from the USDA doing the inspecting, and an Australian watching the Americans inspect. The Aussie isn't allowed within ten feet of the aircraft, for reasons of either security of national soverignty, depending on who you ask. I chatted with him, and was glad to discover that he found the whole thing as amusing as I did. He's got a nice gig, being flown out to a subtropical paradise to watch other people work. He had a small camera to take pictures of the people doing the inspection, I guess to prove that he had in fact inspected. But he'd forgotten to charge it the night before, so he didn't get many shots off.

I had brought my camera, so I took plenty, and I promised I'd mail him a CD-ROM with them. It's all part of international relations. It was kind of odd switching back and forth between taking photos, and directing people to scrub spots at the last minute.

We don't have any failures yet, but they looked at only a third of our aircraft. We'll continue on Monday.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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