I did a tank gauging system for Simmonds, for LNG tanks on a giant barge, when I was with someone else. I did later interview with them, but I didn't think I'd like Vermont.
What I remembered was fabulous bbq ribs on some floating restaurant on Lake Champlain. Ribs? In Vermont?
My favourite technique for that sort of thing is the Helmholtz resonance, which (to leading order) depends only on the air volume in the tank, and not on its shape.
They have to compensate for the weather somehow. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
We had two capacitive level probes and two inclinometers.
Excellent decision! That was the longest winter of my life and since I grew up down around Troy NY, that's saying something.
Burlington is, um, different. Part of it is NYC escapees like Bernie Sanders. UVM leavens the mixture, and IBM had a chip plant at Essex Junction that they sold to GlobalFoundries when they went out of the fab business.
I have to say UVM has a hell of a winter carnival. They should; they have enough raw material to build a full size snow sculpture of the World Trade Center.
I really can't judge how it is to work there under normal conditions. The DISCO thing brought clearances to a screeching halt. They weren't letting people go but there was little to do. It would have been interesting since the test kits were to be programmed in FORTH for extensibility. I did get to go to the FORTH conference in Rochester NY.
Measuring the fuel is only half the fun. Moving fuel to maintain the CG within the envelope is the other half. One person at Simmonds was either a hero or a pariah depending. Rather late in the project she pointed out that in some configurations of the B-1 you couldn't pump enough fuel to maintain the CG.
Then you have something like the AH-64. There are a number of auxiliary tank configurations both internal and external to worry about and the configuration determines how many Hellfire and/or 70 mm rockets you can carry as well as how much 30mm ammo. Missiles, rockets, and ammo may be expended at odd intervals. It gets more complex than bad math on the Gimli glider.
As an aside, many military aircraft can't be flown by an unaided human. Hopefully commercial aircraft aren't as 'advanced'. At least in the Gimli generation a good pilot could set it down without engines or instrumentation although I'm curious about the control surface actuators. At least the hydraulics must not depend on both engines running.
If only. IBM had to _pay_ GF $1.5B to haul their fabs away. :(
I did a bunch of work with the Fishkill and Burlington folks BITD.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
I didn't get that part of the story. A high school/college friend spent his career in Essex Junction and retired prior too the sale. He mentioned IBM was out but didn't go into details.
My cousin worked there in Burlington in the '70s. There was a space problem so her group was temporarily located in a former supermarket. They would get the random person wandering in looking for pork chops. True to the I've Been Moved philosophy she wound up in Tucson. At least it doesn't snow there very often if you stay out of the mountains.
My friend worked at Fishkill on sort of a work/study program. As might be expected RPI had close ties with IBM. Between IBM and the little companies they spun off to avoid monopoly scrutiny it helped to offset the manufacturing fleeing NYS.
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