With a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, the man perched at the workshop bench selects a tool from the dozens strewn about and puts the final touches on a small F-35 model. Geppetto? Santa Claus? He may feel that way some days, but make no mistake — this workshop is all about the airplanes.
Located in Fort Worth, Texas, the work-shop is home to the Lockheed Martin Engineering Concept Models and Exhibits team. An interesting bunch, the models and exhibits team members have backgrounds in engineering, industrial design, electronics, and fine arts, among other disciplines. Despite their varied areas of expertise, they all share a passion for aviation and modeling.
"Most of the people who work in this shop have said at one point or another, 'I can't believe I get paid to build models,' " says design engineer Tom Blakeney. "What we do here is kind of like what the Imagineers do at Disney... though I think we're a little more engineer than Imagineer."
Blakeney's colleagues agree. "There's something in the atmosphere here," explains Richard Adams, senior technical lead for the group and self-professed sole nonmodeler. "And it's not just the smell of modeling cement!
"These guys wake up in the morning and start reading about models. Then they come here and work on models. When they take their coffee break, they're researching models. When they're eating lunch, they catch up on the latest news about models.
And then they go home and build models for fun. While none of them would make this claim, I think many would consider them the best in the world."
Blakeney grins at this description. "Yes, I guess you could say some of us are fanatics."
Beyond The Little Room
The model shop began as a one-man show in the late 1950s, when an engineer in the Advanced Design group was asked to build wooden concept models so that his teammates could see their aircraft designs in three dimensions. His models became so popular that by the 1970s, the company began using the models in air shows as marketing tools. Today the team is thirty-three people strong, consisting of three subteams: presentation models, engineering concept models, and air shows and exhibits models.
Only a few people still work in what they affectionately call "the little room," the place where it all began. Many of them have moved to a larger shop above the factory floor, while the air shows and exhibits team, which includes Adams, work at an off-site location about two miles from the factory. The scattered locations are a testament to the team's literally ever-growing success.
"The air shows and exhibits part of the team oversees all domestic and international trade shows for Lockheed Martin Corporation, so their work takes up quite a bit of space," explains Fred Samudio, head of the models and exhibits group. "Many of these team members travel around the world to construct inter-active displays that tell the story of these aircraft and that show off their teammates' models."
That's not to say the engineering concept model and presentation model groups don't have a good time, too. The engineering concept model team members design, create, and manage three-dimensional real-time studies and assessments. They assist engineers in finding economical solutions to aircraft design issues, from low-speed wind-tunnel test aids to representations of advanced concept designs. The group claims these aids represent the dirty work.
"In other words, we help engineers figure out, 'Is my wild-hair idea nuts, or is this something we can pursue?' " explains design engineer Doug Thompson.
Members of the presentation models group, meanwhile, design, create, and manage aircraft scale models for mechanical, structural, and concept studies as well as for displays. These models are often used by business development representatives in presentations across the globe. When the model is complex, like the full-scale F-35 model, or a moving, working STOVL F-35 transitional model, a model team member often travels with it to ensure all goes according to plan.
Lightning II: A Model Success Story
In fact, the full-scale and transitional models are just two examples of how the F-35 Lightning II has been a model success story. From as early as the conceptual stages, the model and exhibits group has been actively involved in the F-35 program.
With rapid advances in technology plus a wealth of lessons learned from legacy programs, the Lockheed Martin team relied on computers to design and test the F-35. Still, a computer cannot always provide all the answers — especially when it comes to living and working in a three-dimensional world.
Throughout the design phases of the program, the F-35 design engineers consulted the concept models team on issues related to the spatial depth of the aircraft. The model team responded with a variety of creative, low-cost design aids, including a full-scale cockpit replica with an actual Martin-Baker ejection seat.
"The F-35 Pilot Vehicle Interface team routinely requires pilot and cockpit ergonomic design studies, sometimes within a day," explains Samudio. "To help them with those studies, the model team created a design aid composed of three-dimensional cockpit components representing the size, shapes, and materials of the actual cockpit."
The model can be modified easily and quickly for tests. It has been used for a variety of studies, including fit check, pilot visibility, instrument orientation, controls and panels accessibility, seat ergonomics, and cooling air flow. Since it was built in 2002, Jon Beesley, the F-35 chief test pilot has used the design aid to assess ergonomics numerous times.
World Ambassador
Of course, before cockpit tests could occur, there was that matter of winning the contract. When the Lockheed Martin team was preparing to compete for the F-35 contract, the team knew that one of the most important elements would be to explain the advantages of the Lockheed Martin design clearly and concisely. With such innovative technologies and capabilities proposed, explaining the design was no small task.
"We were called on to avoid the death-by-presentation-chart syndrome," says Juan Moya, a model design engineer. "Then, as now, models in three dimensions are often the best way to demonstrate the advantages of a particular aircraft design."
Moya and a group of teammates, along with several outside contractors, spent approximately six months holed up in a tin shack about twenty miles south of the model shop building a full-scale F-35 model. Moya recalls summer temperature nearing 100 degrees Fahrenheit as the team worked eighteen-hour days. He says the experience was the highlight of his career.
"When I see our military customers and the public admiring the full-scale F-35 model and hear comments on how great it looks, that reinforces my positive memories of the effort," says Moya. "I specifically remember one child's remarks when he saw the model at an air show. He said, 'That's the plane I want to fly when I grow up.' "
The running joke among the model team is that the full-scale model is routinely mistaken for the real thing. That's why Adams calls it the "ambassador to the world."
So far, the full-scale model has gone to more than fifty shows and events, including the commissioning of the USS Ronald Reagan and several Paris and Farnborough International Airshows. "Until the first real airplane takes off, this model is the F-35 that the world knows," says Adams. "It's as close to reality as it can get."
In fact, the demand for such an ambassador was so high that the model team created a second full-scale model. Aptly nicknamed Number 2, this model is more complex than the first because it can be broken down for easy shipping overseas. The first full-scale model, Number 1, now serves primarily as a domestic ambassador. Regardless of which model people see, their reaction is usually one of awe.
The models that come out of this shop aren't just full scale, however. The group makes about seven different scales of models, ranging from full scale to 1/72nd scale, where one inch on the model equals six feet on the real thing.
"Right now, we build models for all LM Aeronautics programs," says Blakeney. "We also build models for other Lockheed Martin programs, such as advanced concept designs, submarines, and the new presidential helicopter."
Dozens of models are on display throughout the Fort Worth factory, beginning with the 1/5th-scale models of the F-16, F-22, and F-35 at the entranceway to the countless models displayed proudly in offices and conference rooms throughout the company. Still, not all of the models are for show. The company has an entire room filled with 1/72nd-scale models that allow customers to see how aircraft fit and function on aircraft carriers.
While the designs for all of the models originate in house, production for many of the 1/72nd-scale models is completed by partner organizations. Samudio explains that the model and exhibits group approaches its work as an independent business would and practices lean work initiatives whenever possible. He estimates that the group produces 4,000 to 6,000 1/72nd-scale models a year, but says those are just one small element of their work.
Worth Ten Thousand Words
Show models fall somewhere between the full-scale models and the 1/72nd-scale models. One of the most impressive show models the team has built to date is the F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing, or STOVL, transitional model. A 1/10th-scale model, this work of art contains more than three dozen moving parts and performs a two-minute flight demonstration.
"The process this aircraft has to go through to land vertically is difficult to explain in words," says Adams. "So the group devised a way to explain it with a moving model."
Although the task was daunting at first glance, the team relished the challenge.
"We first built a model that had no moving parts," explains Blakeney. "Then, we worked from the tooling to build a model with moving parts, and we developed proprietary software that allows us to control the model movements through a laptop computer."
"The challenge with the STOVL model, like many of our projects, is that it's not intuitive," adds Thompson. "We were working from a concept. All of this work was done before we won the contract. I think the moving model played a role in Lockheed Martin's win."
The final product, which moves vertically along a pole, replicates all the motions that the real aircraft performs. During the two-minute demonstration, it performs hundreds of functions, including opening doors, deploying flaps and lift fans, and retracting landing gear. The pilot moves, too. This display even has its own soundtrack.
"Before the X-35B performed these functions in real life, people didn't have a clear concept of how our STOVL version of the JSF was going to look or work," says Samudio. "The model, which was completed several years before the X-35B flew vertically, gave customers an excellent preview."
Or as Blakeney likes to put it, "Hey, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a model is worth ten thousand."
Kimberly Jaindl is in the communications leadership development program at Lockheed Martin.
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