By Bailey Toombs
NAVAIR Public Affairs Office

Aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Engineering Department Achievement Awards were presented to 12 recipients at the annual technical conference held by Naval Air Systems Command’s Aircraft and Unmanned Vehicles Department in San Diego, Calif., on May 16. The 12 award winners were chosen from a total of 54 nominations from all NAVAIR sites.

There are two award categories associated with the Achievement Awards –Professional and Apprentice. The Professional category recognizes those with over three years of professional experience while the Apprentice category recognizes those with three years or less of professional experience during the calendar year.

Recipients of the Apprentice award were Drew Adams, North Island; Michelle Delagardelle, North Island; Eric Mathews, China Lake; and Raeanne Williams, Patuxent River.

Adams was recognized for having mastered the UGS Unigraphics NX3 solid modeling program. He applied his new skills to designing replacement F/A-18 Outer Wing, Aft Spar and Aileron Lock Lugs that have already begun saving Outer Wings that would otherwise need to be scrapped. This project and several others have saved the Navy both man-hours and money on repairs.

Delagardelle, who works with the F/A-18 A-F landing gear components, was recognized for her work with brake engineering investigations and failure analysis. “Her positive, get it done attitude, self motivating style, and positive outlook make her a valuable asset to the NAVAIR team,” said Dave Eby, Director, Plans, Programs & Operations, AIR 4.3D.

Mathews was recognized for successfully completing two fatigue-test developments for the F-22 AIM-9M wing tip within the side weapons bay and for the F/A-18 AIM-9M carriage in 2005. He was commended on “his significant responsibility, project management, leadership, technical growth, dedication and top quality accomplishments in fatigue-test development and testing,” said Eby.

Williams was the representative for NAVAIR Hydraulic System Design during the V-22 5,000 psi Titanium Tube Damage Limit Project in 2005. She interfaced with an SAE committee and panel in addition to focusing a team of government, contractor, sub-contractor, commercial, and university experts in logistics, hydraulics, materials, stress, specifications and testing to determine a viable solution for defining operationally safe titanium tube damage limits for the fleet maintainer through extensive lab testing at four facilities and computer modeling.

Recipients of the Professional award were Tracie Okada, North Island; Paul Kenny, Jacksonville; Dr. Jae Lee, Patuxent River; Dr. Hsi Chin Tsai, Patuxent River; Vu Buu, North Island; Heidi Moore, Patuxent River; Mark Petrovic, Cherry Point; and Peter Povich, Cherry Point.

Okada is receiving this award for her work on the NAVAIR North Island Service Life Assessment Program-Service Life Extension Program to extend the life of the F/A-18. She has led a team within NAVAIR North Island’s F/A-18 Fleet Support Team to develop SLEP bulletins to address catapult-arrestment-landing and flight hour driven structures. “Her professionalism, competence and integrity are exceptional,” said Eby.

Kenny is being recognized for playing a crucial role in the P-3 Special Structural Inspection fatigue cracking, P-3 landing gear deep bore grinding investigation and the F/A-18 wing spar cracking inspection procedure development.

In support of the Navy and Northrop Grumman’s LITENING AT pod for use on the F/A-18A/B/C/D aircraft, Lee provided the pre-flight analysis and flight test support for five different stores on station three with LITENING AT pod on station four. The Computational Fluid Dynamics store separation predictions that Lee generated matched actual flight test results very well and significantly reduced the risk and cost of the store separation program.

During this past year Tsai led the development of a detailed non-linear finite element model for the EA-6B structural reliability evaluation. Tsai’s model provided the opportunity to assess fatigue at multiple locations on the wing including the fuel drain holes in the wing center section and the area around rib one of the outer wing panel. His modeling efforts were key to the EA-6B structural reliability analysis and airframe risk assessments of the aging EA-6B.

Buu is the vibration analysis subject matter expert at NAVAIR North Island. He has developed in-depth, detailed vibration troubleshooting work packages for fleet, depot, & Foreign Military Sales customers. He is being recognized for having accomplished significant in-flight vibration baseline data collection and analysis for the E-2 and C-2 aircraft.

“[Moore] is considered by many within NAVAIR and industry to be the Navy's expert in structural integration of crashworthy seating systems,” said Eby. In 2005 Moore supported the V-22 Improved Crashworthy Flight Engineer and Troop Seat Airframe Integration. She also participated in the development of a thorough dynamic qualification program for crashworthy seats resulting in a comprehensive structural loads database, analytical assessment methodology and design criteria that is used by the contractor for evaluating the structural integrity of the airframe interfaces to ensure airframe to seat structural compatibility.

Petrovic and Povich both showed their patriotism and integrity recently by volunteering to be deployed to Al Asad, Iraq, for two and three months, respectively. Petrovic’s primary mission in Iraq was to help maintain forward deployed H-46 and H-53 aircraft to ensure they remain in-service and deployed for up to one year beyond the previously established Fixed Induction Date for Intermediate Maintenance in CONUS.

Povich’s primary mission entailed additional maintenance to extend the services of the H-46 and H-53 aircraft. He voluntarily communicated with other Fleet Support Team’s and completed repairs for other platforms. Petrovic and Povich are being recognized “Due to [their] professionalism, support, 24/7 dedication, commitment and accomplishments with directly supporting and gratifying the warfighters in a very hostile environment,” said Eby.

The annual awards are selected by an Award Selection Committee (ASC), which is made up of the prior year’s recipients of the award. While the award recognizes what the recipient has accomplished during the calendar year, it also serves to recognize the way in which the recipient persevered, maintained a high professional standard and exemplified the core attributes of the department. Those attributes include being motivated, solution centered and results driven.

Eligibility for the Aircraft and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Engineering Department Achievement Awards is limited to non-supervisory personnel in AIR-4.3, AIR-4.76 and AIR-4.9.7. For more information, contact Dave Eby at [email protected].