Building Wing Stands That Keep Mission Planes Flying

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:05][music] [music] >> My name is John Monticelli and I've been with MEF for 30 years and so my wife Joanne and I joined back in 1997 as a pilot mechanic and been working here in fabrication shop and machine shop for the last 3 years or so.

[00:00:35]So we're working on wing stands [music] and they are used to support the aircraft while working on major structures like landing gear and this kind of thing and so kind of like big jack stands you might use for your car.

[00:00:51]When you're working on aircraft the sort of the generic tools that mechanic might have aren't enough and so that's really where the fabrication shop comes in and we can make specialized tools that are used for the specialized jobs that that need to happen and in many cases they're not available.

[00:01:09]These we designed in house so we sent it to a structural engineer the designs and they came back and said this will hold four times the weight that you're putting on it.

[00:01:19]What Cessna says to use is wing jacks which are each cost about I'm guessing you're probably looking at eight to ten grand for a set of wing jacks. What we use is aircraft jacks that are [music] bases already have to get the airplane in the air and then we set these stands underneath the wings and set it back down on these. These cost somewhere [music] between seven to eight hundred dollars for the for the pair.

[00:01:49]So it helps save some money.

[00:01:52]So it's mostly just structural angle iron and and flat bar that's readily available. So, we cut it to length, drill, weld. There are a few pieces on this that are machined that we cut and true on the lathe and and on the mill.

[00:02:10]Um but, most of it is just uh angle iron and flat bar.

[00:02:15]So, this morning um we're about 90% done with uh these stands. Uh Dale is set up getting some fittings [music] prepared to weld, put the wheels on. And since these things break down into to a bunch of pieces, we're also going to label so when somebody's putting it back together, they can just match the letters. It's like a big Erector Set.

[00:02:36]So, that'll be kind of the finishing touches on these. And then we're going to pull this into the paint shop and paint them red.

[00:02:47]When we think of aircraft maintenance, a lot of times we think of filters and and stuff that you directly install on an airplane. But, you can't install those things in most cases without the tools and the infrastructure to do it. And so, [music] um it's easy to say, "Well, we're going to inspect the landing gear." Well, how do we do that? And we if we start thinking about all the requirements and the things that need to be in place to do that, this is just one of the parts and uh that [music] is needed uh for that work. Thank you guys for uh your support of uh of this initiative and and a lot of the other tools and support stuff that we make.

[00:03:20]I've been there on the field and used [music] these tools, and they really um yeah, save a ton of time and effort and [music] um manpower overseas. Um so, yeah, we're Thank you.