Rossi Rifleman

Airplane seats are made across the highway from where I work.

I applied for a job with a group doing interiors and designing and making interior components and reverse engineering them once.
I have to say it was probably a damned good thing I didn't get the job.
About the most exciting thing they were doing was designing/building post 911 reinforced cockpit doors.
Everything else they were doing seemed to be reverse engineering vaccu formed components like light covers and arm rest covers and little covers for the spots on older airplanes that actually had ashtrays.***

I would have probably have been board out of my gourd inside of a week or two.
Hard to go from designing wind tunnel models, small scale UAVs, C130 avionics mods, various pods slapped on various airplanes, structural reinforcements, installing FLIR HUDs and fire suppression gear and entire aircraft environmental systems or avionics suites or engine compartments, etc. to reverse engineering a plastic shell 1/16" thick that is 1/75" wide by 3" long .5" high with 10 degree draft out of sheet polystyrene.

Going even further off topic...down memory lane from the last post.

*** Reminds me of another story. Worked with a guy who, more than a decade and a half earlier maybe two, was on the investigation team for what I assumed was Saudia Flight 163
From the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudia_Flight_163

"Saudi officials found two butane stoves in the burned-out remains of the airliner, and a used fire extinguisher near one of them.[5]:35 One early theory was that the fire began in the passenger cabin when a passenger used his own butane stove to heat water for tea.[13] The investigation found no evidence to support this theory.[5]:78"

Strangely enough, this 'early theory' that a passenger was using an open flame stove was the cause he relayed to me. The Saudi report says only 'cause of the fire remains undetermined'.
https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/Saudi163 ... ortSAA.pdf

A combustion professor I had in college once testified in a case where a gas station burned and a guy pumping gas was killed. He had been seen smoking while pumping gas but his relatives were suing the gas company. The professor's testimony boiled down to 'No spark, no fire.' I've gotten back in my car and left stations where someone was smoking. Had one attendant ask me what was wrong and when I pointed out she was smoking she said 'You're kidding?'

I have two rules for gas stations that cause me to leave. Smoking and fuel delivery.