Hello,

I’m John Chaddock, and for those of you who come to the Begbrook meetings, you’ll probably know me as the one who is the youngest regularly attending member of society meetings. I’ve been interested in all things engineering for as long as I can remember, with a big fascination in things that move other things (trains, planes, automobiles, space travel), turbo machinery (jet engines & rockets), and simulations of all kinds. I’m currently studying for my A levels (maths, further maths, physics and computing) at John Cabot Academy, and hold offers to study Engineering at Girton, Cambridge, and Aero Engineering at Loughborough, to start studying this October.

As one of the younger members of the society, I regularly browse the internet, satisfying my interests, and developing a greater understanding of the subject of engineering, and have discovered a couple of useful people or organisations on YouTube that produce some quite interesting content, and I’m hoping to introduce them to you, and today, I’ll introduce you to AgentJayZ.

AgentJayZ, Jay is a jet engine technician based in what he calls ‘Jet City,’ also known as Fort St John, British Colombia. In the area around Jet City, a number of jet engine maintenance companies exist, drawing on the area’s workforce, with the two main companies being S&S Turbines – http://www.ssturbine.com/ – and  Maddex Turbines – http://www.maddexturbines.com/. Although the companies are separate, they co-exist well, with each company developing their own specialism, and helping each other out. Jay himself is pictured on the S&S website, but regularly he films while wearing a Maddex baseball cap, and no-one seems to mind!

Jay himself works on a number of engines, with GE LM1500s, LM2500s (a bigger 1500), J47s, J79s (an afterburning 1500), CFs6 (a 2500 with a turbofan on the front), an Orenda Iroquois & Orenda 14 all appearing in his videos, as well as an occasional Rolls Royce Spey, Avon & Olympus. He has also worked on a GE T58 for a race boat, which originally designed for the Sikorsky Sea King, of which the RR Gnome was developed from for the Westland Sea King. Most of the engines that he works on are gas turbine variants for industrial use (emergency power generation, movement of gas, e.t.c.), but occasionally, an engine for an aircraft appears, and Jay has recently gone out to ‘a secret location’ in the USA to watch one of his engines be installed in a vintage, privately-owned fighter plane.

Jay’s original videos, and the ones that he still produces the most of, are his test cell videos. These videos document engines going through the testing procedure in a test cell from start-up to shut-down. As Jay ahs upgraded his filming equipment, he has acquired enough cameras to show this procedure from a range of angles, including from the fuelling rig, the front end, the back end, a ‘POV of what Jay is seeing, and during tests of afterburning engines, an ‘on engine’ view, looking back from a point mounted on the frame that holds the engine to the ground. The ‘on engine’ view, although usually (although unsurprisingly!) blurred a little , demonstrates the raw power of those engines, which are usually built for military applications (the J79 was first built en-masse for the F-104 Starfighter, which saw use in Vietnam with the USAF).

As well as the test cell videos, the other long-running series that Jay produces is the ‘Your Questions’ series. In this series, viewers from around the world send in questions relating to jet engines, and Jay then attempts to pronounce their name, after which he will then attempt to answer the question from his memory and knowledge. Occasionally, he simply replies with ‘I don’t know,’ as one of the rules of the series is that he does not do research into the questions before going on camera, as it will just take too long.

Finally, on top of the regular ongoing series, Jay also films smaller, more temporary series of videos on particular aspects of jet engines, whether that be a particular engine he is working on, such as the Orenda Iroquois, or a section of jet tech, such as the maintenance of the leading edge of a turbine blade. These videos are the most informative of all, as Jay can sometimes spend quite a time explaining a part, how it works, or what he is doing with that part. Occasionally, Jay also works on a particular project, and these projects occasionally give him the opportunity to demonstrate his engines actually doing their job ‘in the field.’

All in all, Jay is a great, informative video presenter and producer, and I always look forward to the day when another video appears. The link to his channel is below.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AgentJayZ

Comment is free, and is below, I look forward to hearing from you,

John C.