Balance and Precision
By Richard Shapiro
December 2016
My story is quite simple. I am a former employee of a Boeing subsidiary that manufactured the gearboxes for the CH-47 Chinook helicopter. I am an aerospace enthusiast and go to many air shows. At one local air show there was a CH-47 on display.
At the end of the show, the pilots were going through pre-flight checks. At one point the pilot went to the front rotors and, with only a couple of fingers and the lightest force, the pilot rotated the front blades, and in perfect tandem the rear blades also moved.
I thought to myself, "I made those transmission gears that so easily allowed the pilot to do this pre-flight check."
This was a true demonstration of the precision that Boeing demanded in their transmissions, and I helped produce those transmissions.