STAFF PROFILE: When It Comes to Twin’s
Answer-Man, Experience Counts
Pence works from his Twin Commander office in
Arlington, Washington
If there is such a thing as a brain trust in the Twin Commander community, then Geoffrey Pence must be one of the temporal lobes, a repository of knowledge and insight gained over years of focused experience. How much experience? He first turned a wrench on a Twin Commander in 1973. He’s still at it today, except that as Twin Commander Aircraft LLC’s Technical Service Manager, he’s helping today’s Twin Commander technicians turn their wrenches the right way.
Pence has done it all from a technician’s perspective—earned an Associate’s degree in Specialized Technology that also led to an FAA Airframe & Powerplant certificate, earned a Private Pilot’s certificate, worked as a mechanic and tech rep at several authorized Twin Commander service centers, and for Gulfstream Aerospace as a regional tech rep when Twin Commander JetProps were in production. All of those years of hands-on experience bear considerable fruit in his current post as Twin Commander Aircraft’s resident tech rep, a job he has held since 1999.
Pence’s principal job is to field inquiries from service center technicians—questions ranging from part numbers to how to properly install a complex, custom-made (using an English wheel) wing skin.
Pence also serves as Twin Commander’s official liaison with the FAA’s Seattle-based Aircraft Certification Office. The framed type certificates for the various Twin Commander models that adorn Pence’s office walls are his FAA calling cards. Finally, Pence monitors Twin Commander’s Seattle-area vendors to ensure that parts are designed and manufactured according to strict quality standards.
Pence surrounded by office staff at Gulfstream Aerospace – the last days of Gulfstream Commander production.
Decades of experience as a Twin Commander technician is not Pence’s sole qualification for the job of in-house tech specialist. The contacts he’s made over the years, and the communication network he has developed, are key to his effectiveness. “I’ve always been in contact with Commander customers,” he says. “Customers” includes both service centers and end users—owners and operators flying Twin Commanders.
After graduating from the Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics in 1972, Pence did a brief stint bonding fuselage and canopy parts for Grumman American Aircraft in Cleveland. He then moved west to Hillsboro, Oregon, and in 1973 went to work for Eagle Aircraft, which was a Rockwell Commander sales and service center. “That’s when I touched my first Commander,” Pence says.
Over the next five years he bounced around Oregon working as a mechanic for various aviation companies, including two stints at Eagle, and in 1978 began a five-year career as a mechanic, including the lead A&P, at Aero Air, which had taken over the Commander franchise from Eagle. Next he went to Gulfstream Aerospace in Bethany, Oklahoma as a regional tech rep, and then back to Aero Air and, later, Flightcraft, Inc. in Portland. During those years Pence progressed from shop foreman to service manager, customer service manager, and technical services manager, culminating with chief inspector and quality assurance manager.
In 1999 Twin Commander Aircraft recruited Pence as its customer service manager. Authorized service centers are Twin Commander’s official “customers” because the service centers purchase the parts and technical publications, and work with the factory on maintenance, modification, and upgrade issues. Pence has since been named the Technical Services Manager.
Despite all of that experience, Pence says there is never a week “when I don’t run across something I’ve never seen before.” The tools of his trade are the extensive knowledge database tucked away in his temporal lobes, and digitized drawings that lay bare the structure and components of each Twin Commander model. The drawings serve as the maps that guide Pence to answers to technical riddles. Sometimes, however, finding the correct route to the answer can be like working your way through a maze.
For example, when the aircraft were in production engineers made many small changes to the design and to the roster of vendors, and tracking down those changes on the drawings to ensure that he provides the correct part or procedure to a service center technician often becomes a Sherlock Holmes-style exercise in sleuthing. “There are lots of different nooks and crannies in the drawing system,” Pence says. Navigating his way through those nooks and crannies is all in a day’s work for a senior member of the Twin Commander brain trust.
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