June 1992

Hangar 4 at Meridian Aircraft Service sits off Jabara Airport on the northeast side of Wichita, a city that has built more airplanes than most countries own. When the second shift is over and the tools are back on the boards, a band sets up on the hangar floor between a single-engine airplane on jacks and the parts cage. The band is called Mechanical. Its members built nothing in this hangar. They fix what is brought in.

All five are certificated aircraft mechanics. One of them holds an inspection authorization, which means he can sign off work the others cannot, and he reminds them of it. None of them set out to start a band. In 1989, during a run-up to warm an engine before a compression check, the engine settled into a low, resonant drone. Del Krantz said, flatly, that it was a B-flat. Roy Vandersloot said it was not. The argument lasted most of a week, and at the end of it there were instruments in the hangar.

Krantz sings and plays rhythm guitar and holds a note the way he holds a torque wrench at the final click. Vandersloot plays lead, down-picking fast and even, his right hand like a rivet gun. Marlin Bemis, called Torque, plays bass and stands perfectly still. Wendell Pruett plays drums and locks the tempo to a tachometer in his head. Emmett Ostrander plays keyboards and runs the samples and the engine recordings, and stands a little apart from the others, which they say is because he is the only one of the five who leaves the ground. He holds a private pilot certificate. In a hangar, they explained, that is a distinction, and not entirely a compliment.

The band holds that music and maintenance are the same discipline practiced on different materials. A song, like an airframe, is either within tolerance or it is not. They tune to A440 because the manual says so. Every performance is logged to the tenth of an hour, the way time is logged on an engine, and the sheets are kept. The last set we saw ran 0.9. Krantz wrote it down before he put the guitar in its case.

Their new record is Airworthiness Directive, on Thrust Reverser Recordings. An airworthiness directive, for readers who do not spend their evenings in hangars, is the government's notice that a defect has been found in a type of aircraft or part and must be corrected, by a stated time, in a stated way. Compliance is not optional. The band does not present the record as optional either. It has four songs: "Magneto Drop," "Left Mag Only," "Carb Ice" and "Firewall." The first two concern the pair of independent ignition systems on a piston engine, which a pilot checks one at a time before takeoff, watching for a drop in engine speed that must stay within limits. "Carb Ice" concerns the ice that can form inside a carburetor on a warm, damp day and quietly starve the engine. It is the most frightening song on the record and has no words.

"There is no turbulence," Krantz said. "There is only insufficient understanding."

We asked Krantz about the weather. He said what the band says on stage between songs. "There is no turbulence," Krantz said. "There is only insufficient understanding." Ostrander, the pilot, has flown across the Flint Hills in July. He did not say anything. He did look at the floor for a moment.

The band plays union halls, a club in Derby run for and by the people who rivet, and this hangar, and almost nowhere else. They are not interested in touring. They have work in the morning. When we left, Bemis was coiling cables in the over-under manner and Pruett was sweeping. Vandersloot was still saying it was not a B-flat.