My office for the week...

[bartjo06]

My work brings me to some pretty cool places from time to time...





This week, Cancun.

[Botlfed]

What do you do? Cus you drive like a million miles a year.

[bartjo06]

I'm an engineer. I inspect combined cycle power plants (very large gas turbine [jet engine] with a boiler attached to the exhaust). My office is in Maine and I normally travel around the Northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, Mass, Rhode Island, etc.) but sometimes I get to come to fun places like this.

[gavin05]

trade jobs with me

[bartjo06]

trade jobs with me

If you want to wear coveralls, a harness, steel toes, hard hat, and safety glasses in 90 degree heat and crawl around a boiler all day, be my guest... it's dirty and hard work, but it makes it worth it when I get to do projects like this.


Went to a Tequilaria after work today and learned all about the different kinds (anejo, reprosado, etc.). Was pretty cool, got to try a bunch of different ones and ended up treating myself to a bottle the woman recommended. Might be kicking out tomorrow to head back to Cancun and have a few days of fun before our flight back on Sunday. More pictures will follow for you guys that are picture fiends.

[ChevyLee]

If you want to wear coveralls, a harness, steel toes, hard hat, and safety glasses in 90 degree heat and crawl around a boiler all day, be my guest... it's dirty and hard work, but it makes it worth it when I get to do projects like this.


Went to a Tequilaria after work today and learned all about the different kinds (anejo, reprosado, etc.). Was pretty cool, got to try a bunch of different ones and ended up treating myself to a bottle the woman recommended. Might be kicking out tomorrow to head back to Cancun and have a few days of fun before our flight back on Sunday. More pictures will follow for you guys that are picture fiends.

Sounds nice compared to my old job. Black pants, black shirt, steel toed boots, in the back of an 18 wheel unloading freight. Inside the truck would be about 150, and outside the truck would be around 100 lol. I could lose 15 lbs in 1 day though.

Don't have to much fun!

[00shortbox]

Man that'd be fun! Wish I was able to travel in my job. But I do get to drive lots of cool vehicles everyday!

[DamnYankee]

Sounds nice compared to my old job. Black pants, black shirt, steel toed boots, in the back of an 18 wheel unloading freight. Inside the truck would be about 150, and outside the truck would be around 100 lol. I could lose 15 lbs in 1 day though.

Don't have to much fun!

If you lost 15 pounds a day, you'd be dead in a week. That doesn't make any sense. Story teller.

[Frenchy]

And that's why I gave up fixing crap to chase after my CPL. That and flight attendants

[bartjo06]

Sounds nice compared to my old job. Black pants, black shirt, steel toed boots, in the back of an 18 wheel unloading freight. Inside the truck would be about 150, and outside the truck would be around 100 lol. I could lose 15 lbs in 1 day though.

Don't have to much fun!

I know what you mean, I eat like a HORSE on inspections and still manage to lose weight by the time I get home. Today, I went to inspect a high pressure steam drum and couldn't because the temperature inside it was 80 degrees C (that's ~175 F), needless to say I told them I would do it tomorrow. The crappy thing is, they are ~5" thick carbon steel and hold heat for DAYS, so it'll probably still be ~120F tomorrow when I do inspect it.

I'm trying not to have too much fun, but it's hard when you're in party central

Man that'd be fun! Wish I was able to travel in my job. But I do get to drive lots of cool vehicles everyday!

I'm jealous, I normally get stuck with terrible rental cars, I'm actually surprised I got a new Passat while I was here.

And that's why I gave up fixing crap to chase after my CPL. That and flight attendants

I don't actually fix stuff, I just tell them what's wrong, how to fix it, then sometimes oversee the repairs being made. I can't blame you though, I think being a pilot would be AWESOME.

A little info on how my industry ties into your prospective industry...

The boilers I inspect make steam using the exhaust gas from a gas turbine very similar to those on large scale commercial airplanes... in fact, GE LM2500s and LM6000s were very popular in earlier HRSG (Heat Recovery Steam Generator) days and were called "aero derivative" turbines because they were almost exact replicas of the ones used on airplanes. Later, the demand for power and the high efficiency of these type of power plants drove gas turbine manufactures to make larger units and they called them "Frame" units. A typical HRSG I inspect uses a gas turbine that is ~5 times larger than your typical gas turbine on an Airbus A300.

I inspect these:



The gas turbine would be in the right hand side of this picture where the duct throttles down to the smallest size.

Thought some of you mechanical/gear heads would think it was cool... if not, that's fine too!