Aviation Distribution Blog

There are many parts to an airplane, but few people really take notice of such parts when boarding an airplane. While it’s definitely not a necessity for the average person to know all about important plane parts and their functions, it can still be beneficial for you to know more about what you’re boarding, and it should make the experience that much more interesting. Below is a brief outline of the main parts of an airplane and what their functions are.

A turboprop engine is a type of turbine engine used to power an aircraft propeller. A very well-known and respected turboprop engine type is the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6. Developed by Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC), it was designed in the late 1950’s before entering service in 1964. Many variants of the engine have been made since its inception, but the PT6A has remained the most widely-used. Not only are these engines popular among pilots, they are loved just as much by mechanics. Here are three reasons why:

National Stock Numbers or NSNs, are 13-digit serial numbers assigned to all standardized items within the federal supply chain. All components that are used by the U.S Department of Defense are required to have an NSN, the purpose of which is to provide a standardized naming of components. The NSN system can be dated back to the WWII era when the military would use a specific component that had several different names depending on who supplied or manufactured the component. This made it difficult for the military to locate suppliers, or share items between the different organizational branches. An item could be in short supply in one location, but in surplus in another. To overcome this sourcing issue, the Department of Defense created the NSN system.

Cranks and crankshafts have existed since the ancient Roman Empire, in a variety of agricultural and industrial applications. With the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the internal combustion engine, however, crankshafts became an integral and vital part of motors, without which vehicles like automobiles and aircraft could not function.

Modern turbofan engines are remarkably complex pieces of machinery, so tools for maintaining and repairing them must be specialized to the task. In this blogpost, we’ll break down six types of tools you should always have if you’re performing regular turbofan maintenance.