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Comment by sc970 | Hacker News Reader

civil aircraft engineers will carry this and 3M 425 aluminium ‘speed tape’ with them which covers most jobs.

This is for sealing the cargo hold wall panels to ensure they are completely covered in flam proof materials. Normally a visual inspection is carried out each week to look for any damage in the holds.

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At the Baku Formula 1 race this year, the Alpha Tauri team taped together the rear wing on Yuki Tsunoda's car when it began flapping around—perplexing some fans. (Dynamic adjustment of the wing didn't work after that, of course, and more importantly Tsunoda finished thirteenth outside of the points, making the effort moot.) In the discussions, it surfaced that ‘speed tape’ is what's used in F1, also with some educating photos like an airplane turbine being sealed with such tape.

13th is still respectable, and if the people in front had issues they would have gone up in the ranks - better to finish in less than ideal circumstances than not try at all.

Eh, five drivers retired from that race, including both Ferraris—so Tsunoda was in fact third last, ahead only of young Schumacher and Latifi. I mean, it was an okay try, but regrettably it went nowhere.

Young? I'm pretty sure he was racing when I was a child 30 years ago.

That's the not-young one. This year's Mick Schumacher is Michael's son. In fact, he's thirty years younger.

There's a driver at age 30 and has a son 30 years younger than him who also drives?

The father (Michael) is 53, and he has been paralyzed for almost 10 years after a skiing accident.

For reference. MEA A320 weekly check https://masco.com.lb/wp-content/plugins/documents/A320%20WEE...

Tangent but this caught my eye:

>Cleaning of vacuum waste lines with chemical cleaning agent and crushed ice

Is there like a special ice cleaning slurry they use? Or do they just dump a bucket of ice and some chemicals in the lavatory and flush?

Some people use ice to clean RV tanks too. Flush a bunch of it then drive a while and let it bang around as it melts then drain it. Probably would work on a boat too.

Works well for garbage disposals. Also a good way to get rid of freezer ice that's bern through too many defrost cycles.

Yeah. Used to do this in my years of traveling in a fifth-wheel. Works great.

Just some ice and chemical then flush.

Skychem or Honeybee 76 is the chemical

And in between checking maintenance log book and tire pressures:-

Replace the Espresso Machine Frother P/N: 227431250 as per DEV 338A Part III

How does 3M 425 compare to 3M 3340? 3340 is some foil tape I bought from Lowes in the HVAC section, with "cold weather" printed on it in red text.

In terms of thickness, I see 425 is 2.8 mils thick, vs 3340 which is 2.0 mils.

In terms of temp range, I see 425 goes down a bit colder (-65 F vs -40 F).

They seem really similar, like 425 is a somewhat improved version. But it's surprising that this comparison PDF, which shows a lot of 425 alternatives, doesn't show the basic stuff I got from Lowes (3340) https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1390627O/3m-aluminum-foi...

The 425 seems to have higher steel adhesion and tensile strength. 3340 looks to be specifically geared towards HVAC.

Here’s a pdf to help select metal tapes:

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/856073O/3m-metal-foil-ta...

And the data sheets for both tapes:

https://technicaldatasheets.3m.com/en_US?pif=000010?locale=e... https://technicaldatasheets.3m.com/en_US?pif=000116?locale=e...

And some more tape pdfs, honestly a lot of it is super interesting, I never put much thought just into how many different kinds of adhesives there are:

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1016166O/3m-masking-and-...

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1015901O/3m-industrial-a...

https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/1012104O/3m-converter-ma...

IIRC it's surprisingly common to see bits of speed tape on commercial airliners, used to temporarily seal things off until they can be repaired more permanently.

Tangent to this: there was an airline accident when the service crew used transparent tape instead of the reflective silver tape somewhere on the belly of the plane (or wings, I don't remember). Then when the pilot was doing preflight inspection at night with a torchlight, the spot with the transparent tape was not visible to him. This was an error on the ground crew side.

It would need some googling to find the details.

Aeroperú Flight 603: "Flying over water, at night, with no visual references, the pilots were unaware of their true altitude, and struggled to control and navigate the aircraft. The investigation determined that the air data computers were unable to show correct airspeed and altitude on cockpit displays because a maintenance worker had failed to remove tape covering the pitot-static system ports on the aircraft exterior"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroper%C3%BA_Flight_603

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