Airframe (Page 76)
There was a numeral 1! AUX COA had registered a fault, on the second leg of the flight That meant the AUX COA line was being used by the aircraft.
But what was it used for?
She sucked in her breath.
She hardly dared to hope.
Ron said that AUX COA was a line for Customer Optional Additions. The customer used it for add-ons, like a QAR.
The QAR was the Quick Access Recorder, another flight data recorder installed to help the maintenance crews. It recorded many of the same parameters as a regular DFDR. If a QAR was on this aircraft, it could solve all her problems.
But Ron insisted this plane didn’t have a QAR.
He said he’d looked in the tail, which was where it was usually installed on an N-22. And it wasn’t there.
Had he ever looked anywhere else?
Had he really searched the plane?
Because Casey knew an optional item like the QAR was not subject to FAA regulation. It could be anyplace in the aircraft the operator wanted it – in the aft accessory compartment, or the cargo hold, or the radio rack beneath the cockpit … It could be just about anywhere.
Had Ron really looked?
She decided to check for herself.
She spent the next ten minutes thumbing through thick Service Repair Manuals for the N-22, without any success. The manuals didn’t mention the QAR at all, or at least she couldn’t find any reference. But the manuals she kept in her office were her personal copies; Casey wasn’t directly involved in maintenance, and she didn’t have the latest versions. Most of the manuals dated back to her own arrival at the company; they were five years old.
That was when she noticed the Heads-Up Display, sitting on her desk.
Wait a minute, she thought. She grabbed the goggles, slipped them on. She plugged them into the CD player. She pressed the power switch.
Nothing happened.
She fiddled with the equipment for a few moments, until she realized there was no CD-ROM in the machine. She looked in the cardboard box, found a silver platter, and slid it into the player. She pressed the power button again.
The goggles glowed. She was staring at a page from the first maintenance manual, projected onto the inside of the goggles. She wasn’t quite sure how the system worked, because the goggles were just an inch from her eyes, but the projected page appeared to float in space, two feet in front of
her. The page was almost transparent; she could see right through it.
Korman liked to say that virtual reality was virtually useless, except for a few specialized applications. One was maintenance. Busy people working in technical environments, people who had their hands full, or covered in grease, didn’t have the time or inclination to look through a thick manual. If you were thirty feet up in the air trying to repair a jet engine, you couldn’t carry a stack of five-pound manuals around with you. So virtual displays were perfect for those situations.. And Korman had built one.
By pressing buttons on the CD player, Casey found that she could scroll through the manuals. There was also a search function, that flashed up a keyboard hanging in space; she had to repeatedly press another button to move a pointer to the letter Q, then A, then R. It was clumsy.
But it worked.
After a moment of whirring, a page hung in the air before her:
N-22
QUICK ACCESS RECORDER (QAR)
RECOMMENDED LOCATIONS
Pressing more buttons, she scrolled through a sequence of diagrams, showing in detail all the places where the QAR could be located on the N-22 aircraft.
There were about thirty places in all.
Casey clipped the player onto her belt, and headed for the door.
AIRPORT MARINA
10:20 P.M.
Marty Reardon was still in Seattle.
His interview with Gates had run long, and he’d missed his plane. Now he was coming down in the morning. Jennifer had to revise the schedule.
It was going to be a difficult day, she realized She’d hoped to start at nine. Now she couldn’t begin until ten at the earliest. She sat in the hotel room with her laptop, figuring it out.
9:00-10:00 Transfer from LAX
10:00-10:45 Barker at ofc
11:00-11:30 King at airport
11:30-12:00 FAA at airport
12:15-1:45 Transfer to Burbank
2:00-2:30 Rogers at Burbank
2:30-3:30 Stand-up outside Norton
4:00-4:30 Singleton at Norton
4:30-6:00 Transfer to LAX
Too tight. No time for lunch, for traffic delays, for normal production screwups. And tomorrow was Friday; Marty would want to make the six o’clock plane back to New York. Marty had a new girlfriend, and he liked to spend the weekend with her. Marty would be very pissy if he missed the flight.
And he was definitely going to miss it.
The problem was that by the time Marty finished with Singleton in Burbank, it would be rush hour. He’d never make his plane. He really should leave Burbank by two-thirty. Which meant pushing Singleton up, and holding off the lawyer. She was afraid she’d lose the FAA guy if she changed him at the last minute. But the lawyer would be flexible. He’d wait until midnight if they asked him to.
She’d talked with the lawyer earlier. King was a blowhard, but he was plausible in short bites. Five, ten seconds. Punchy. Worth doing.
9:00-10:00 Transfer from LAX
10:00-10:45 Barker at ofc
11:00-11:30 FAA at airport
11:30-12:30 Transfer to Burbank
12:30-1:00 Rogers at Burbank
1:00-2:00 Stand-up outside Norton
2:00-2:30 Singleton at Norton
2:30-4:00 Transfer to LAX
4:00-4:30 King at airport
5:00-6:00 Pad
That would work. In her mind, she reviewed her pullouts. If the FAA guy was good (Jennifer hadn’t met him yet, just talked on the phone), then Marty might run over with him. If it took too long to transfer to Burbank, she’d blow off Rogers, who was weak anyway, and go right to Marty’s stand-up. Singleton would be fast – Jennifer wanted to keep Marty moving there, so he didn’t attack the woman too much. A tight schedule would help.