What's the Word? Eagle Alumni Spotlight Podcast: Ron Fielding

In this episode, Ron Fielding, a retired Boeing engineer, reflects on his career and how well his education at Embry-Riddle prepared him for his work. He graduated in 1986 with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, attending both Prescott and Daytona Beach campuses. Ron started at Boeing in defense, transitioning to commercial aircraft and eventually working with Boeing Materials and Technology (BMT), in Quality Assurance and as a Standards Engineer managing specifications and standards for aircraft materials and processes. Ron estimates that he wrote over 100 feet of paperwork, including detailed specifications for materials and hardware. He emphasizes the importance of clear, concise documentation for international manufacturers from different backgrounds. He hopes that current Embry-Riddle students will study hard and enjoy their time at the university.

Transcript:

Leah: Good morning everybody, and welcome back to What's the Word? I'm your host, Leah Little, and today we're here with a special guest. Good morning, Ron. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Ron: Sure, I'm retired from the Boeing company. Graduated from Embry Riddle back in 1986 in Aeronautical Engineering. I attended both the Prescott campus and the Daytona Beach campus. The reason was, in my final year, there was only a handful or less students in Aeronautical Engineering, and they didn't necessarily offer all the classes that I needed to graduate. So in order to graduate, I took my last term in Daytona. It was a good experience to see both campuses. 

Leah: Cool. That's interesting, because now an AE major is one of the more common ones, too.

Ron: We had a lot of classes where there was only one or two of us in the entire class. Some of the optional classes in senior year kind of thing - either they didn't even have an instructor or there wasn't enough students to hold the class, or the class wasn't being offered kind of thing.

Leah: Interesting. It's super cool to see how much it's actually grown.

Ron: Oh yeah, I'm shocked every time I return to the campus and see all the changes that have, that have occurred, and it's all for the good. It's amazing what facilities and labs and things like that they've put on campus now.

Leah: Yeah, for sure. So what's your favorite memory from your time at Embry Riddle? 

Ron: Well, that's a tough question. I enjoyed, I think the people that I met, both students and faculty. Also some of the folks who were actually in aviation, it was a really neat experience to meet everyone and keep track of what everybody's doing and have done.

Leah: Are you still in touch with any of your friends from Embry? 

Ron: Oh yeah, yeah. There was a whole gang of us from the day that we still meet a lot of times. We go to the October West, we meet up there, and we actually hold an alumni dinner amongst ourselves. 

Leah: That's so fun!

Ron: Whoever shows up that particular year, we all get together and have dinner so cool.

Leah: So you said you retired. Can you tell me a little bit about your career in Boeing?

Ron: Well, I started out on that defense side, and I was working in drones and targets, and Boeing later decided to get out of drones and targets business. They wanted to concentrate on building commercial aircraft. So they shut down all the drone work, and so I transferred over into the commercial side of things. I worked in Boeing materials and technology, or we call it BMT, and we owned all of the specifications and standards within the Boeing Company for designing, building and manufacturing aircraft. 

Leah: What do you mean by that? 

Ron: So Boeing has standards and specifications that tell you how and what materials to use on an aircraft. We also write a process specification on how the material is to be processed, terms of strength, heat, treat material properties, etc. That's all documented and detailed by BMT. And we also will go out and qualify manufacturers throughout the world to make material or fasteners or standards to the specification that we write.

Leah: Interesting. So would you say that you use writing a whole lot in your career?

Ron: Throughout the career, it was extensive writing on the military side, targets and drones, if you're doing a flight test, you end up writing a flight test report, technical document, and then there's contracts and things of that nature to write. And of course, in the standards business, that was all writing and documentation. We owned warehouses full of documentation.

Leah: Really!? That's a lot of paper. It was all kept in filing cabinets.

Ron: Yep, it's part of the aircraft certification, so it has to be kept as long as the aircraft is air worthy.

Leah: Huh! It's all the paperwork side that you wouldn't really think of.

Ron: Yeah, it's a lot of paperwork, in fact, including the qualification reports that the manufacturers All right, prepare, and then we would review them for accuracy. And that all had to be kept on file because that all became part of the type certification for the aircraft,

Leah: And all that documentation is really essential just to ensure the safety of it, because it's aviation, you have so many redundancies in place. That documentation is really essential.

Ron: Yeah, if there was an incident on a part, or someone had a question on a part, we often would go back into the archives and pull out the information and review it a lot of times, especially in my latter years, we were actually going back and re-qualifying a lot of manufacturers to build parts on platforms like the B-52 bomber that were originally manufactured back in what, the 1960s and a lot of those manufacturers had closed their doors or were no longer in business. So you had to go out and find new replacement manufacturers that could build those parts and re-qualify them again.

Leah: That's something that you would never really think about. That's cool.

Ron: Yeah, part of BMT, we had paint specialists that did nothing but work with paint. We have specifications on not only how to apply the paint, but color matching, color checking, and it's a whole business unto itself, just paint. I forget the exact number, but we have something in the order of 150 different shades of white paint alone. When you take into account the off white's, white, slightly gray or however you want to describe it, but you also have gloss, gloss, white and interior, white and exterior, white. And the list goes on and on, and you end up with hundreds of different combinations of white,

Leah: Wild... so it covers the paint on the inside and the outside paint as well?

Ron: Sure the outside of your airplane can have white on it, same on the interior.

Leah: Interesting. So did all the materials also apply to the inside of the aircraft, like the seats and the harnesses and stuff like that, or was it just the aircraft itself?

Ron: It's all documented and was all controlled under BMT. Some materials are used both on the inside and on the outside of the aircraft, but a lot of materials are specialized. The intention is to use it just on the inside of the aircraft or just on the outside. It depends: a lot of the materials on the inside of the aircraft have to pass slum ability and smoke testing, which is expensive and hard to pass. So we don't necessarily want to put some of those materials on the outside of the airplane, because they're more expensive, because they've gone through all that testing. 

Leah: That makes sense. So how many reports do you think that you wrote, either in just the drones or just the material engineering? How much writing do you think you did? I'm curious.

Ron: I wouldn't count it actually as reports. I would maybe measure it in feet... of paperwork, and I'm probably gonna say over 100 feet of paperwork.

Leah: That's crazy. That's literally mind blowing to me.

Ron: Lot of reports are inch, inch and a half thick, several 100 pages, a lot of reading. That's why at night, I tend not to go home and read a book or something, because I've been looking at text and fine print and documents all day long.

Leah: Yeah. The last thing you want to do when you go home is read some more. Yeah. So do you do a report on the smallest piece, like an individual screw and washer and nut and bolt, or is it on a bigger scale than that?

Ron: Yeah, we have specifications for washers, screws, nuts, bolts, the design of the actual piece of hardware. And then we wrote specifications on how to install the rivet or the screw or the bolt, and what to torque it to, and things like that, how to apply the sealant, if it's a sealed fastener. And then we also, like to say, reviewed the call reports and or qualified to manufacture to build that rivet, screw, nut or bolt. That was done throughout the world. 

Leah: Dang. Did you have to work with different languages and things like that because of the worldwide manufacturing?

Ron: When we write these documents, it takes some experience to make sure that you're writing in a clear and concise manner. There's various groups of people using all this documentation to build the aircraft and or the part for the aircraft. And they can be from foreign countries that where English is their second language. Also you have varying education levels of people interpreting what you're writing. You want everything to be made exactly the same way all the time, so you want to make sure there's no real room for interpretation in the wrong direction from what you're intending.

Leah: That sounds a lot easier said than done. 

Ron: It really is. It's one thing to say it, it's in there, and to do it and to have it done right. 

Leah: Well, do you think that Embry Riddle prepared you adequately for writing with that style?

Ron: To a degree they did. They gave me the foundation on report writing and use of the English language, I guess. But a lot of it is what I'll call Boeing-ized. So Boeing has their ways, Airbus has their ways. So a lot of it is on the job training as well. But if you have a good foundation for that, then you'll do well.

Leah: Interesting, so was there anything else that was different from how Embry Riddle taught you about the industry? 

Ron: In hindsight, the training and education I got at Embry Riddle was absolutely awesome. I was, I thought, well prepared compared to some of my colleagues who went to other schools, which I credit with helping me have a successful career.

Leah: That's awesome. That's good to hear! Do you wish that you could have known anything before leaving Embry Riddle and transitioning into the workplace?

Ron: I think when I graduated, I kind of had the idea that I'd be getting a job at Boeing or Lockheed or Airbus or whomever, and I would be set free to sit there and design the latest and greatest airplane. But in actual fact, there's so many millions of parts that you get assigned to work in a specific area, although your contribution is in that area, it's not all encompassing in terms of your designing and building your own airplane kind of thing. I had more of an opinion that I would be design my own aircraft, but that isn't really the case.

Leah: You'd be the solo engineer, instead of a team of 500 engineers that would work on plane?

Ron: Right, yeah.

Leah: What was the name of the position that you held at Boeing?

Ron: I started out in targets and drones, and then I transitioned over to the commercial side. I held positions in general program engineering and quality assurance and but I ended up in Boeing Materials and Technology as a standards engineer.

Leah: Did you see yourself working in that position, in that specific career field when you left Embry?

Ron: No, I didn't really think about any of those opportunities to be honest. Like I say, I thought I would be out designing the latest and greatest aircraft, but that doesn't really happen. You work in a niche field. But really, even in targets and drones, that was maybe the closest to what I thought I would be doing once I moved over to the commercial side, totally different. 

Leah: Interesting. Do you have any advice that you'd have for the students currently at Embry Riddle?

Ron: My only advice is to study hard, enjoy your time at Embry Riddle and look forward to a successful career in aviation. You have a lot to look forward to.

Leah: Well, thank you so much for your time, Ron, thank you for talking with me. It was nice to talk to you. 

Ron: You bet! Enjoyed it.

Dr. Amelia Chesley: This podcast is supported by the Department of Humanities and communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Our hosts and producers are Owen Smith and Leah little. I'm Amelia Chesley, Assistant Professor of Professional Writing. Many thanks to the Prescott campus writing and Design Lab for hosting our transcripts. The intro and outro music is wanderer by Alex. You can find us where most podcasts are found. And if you are a Prescott campus alumni, please reach out so we can feature you in a future episode