GE Reports

There are few people who know more about bad days for flying than Brian De Bruin and his team at GEs jet engine testing facility in Peebles, Ohio. The teams job is to make sure that GE engines keep working when they run into bad thunderstorms or a stray seagull. They expose the machines to hail and monsoon rain, hit them with bird carcasses, and even set off small explosions inside to simulate blade failure. Some of these tests are relatively benign, but others are quite damaging, De Bruin says. Youve got to prove that your engines are good.

A GEnx engine is powering through a simulated hail storm.Top image: Internet sensationMarquese Scott recently dancedinside a Peebles test cell. Image credit: GE Aviation

De Bruin is the site leader at thePeebles Test Operation, located in a bucolic corner of Ohio where GE has been putting engines through their paces for six decades.

When the site opened in 1954, the five technicians who worked there poured concrete for the first test stand and brought their measuring instruments in a moving van. They were led by Leo Pappy White, a legendary GE engineer who had been previously firing captured German V-2 rockets at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The first jet engine testing control room at Peebles. Image credit: GE Aviation

White and his team started testing new jet fuels and engines at Peebles. "Back then, you could stand 100 feet behind the jet engine and have a conversation," remembers Orvile Jones, 93, who took over as manager of the site after White left.

At the time, Peebles was a lonely place. Besides the five of us, there were five security guards patrolling the property on horses and making sure that people didnt come near where we running secret operations, Jones says.

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