Dan Thomas
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2008
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Dan Thomas
As if we made it all up. No, we read service manuals, parts catalogs, service bulletins, ADs, textbooks, TCDS's, regulations, and a lot of lesser-known stuff. There are online magazine articles, too, but one has to watch those for accuracy. There are too many aviation myths taken as truth by too many people who don't get into the manuals and texts, and simply repeat them in the articles they write.I’m working on assembling a document with Dan’s and Magman’s posts, plus a few others. It’ll be a fair amount of work, but will be a great maintenance bible.
And we find mistakes made by other mechanics, and we read of accidents caused by such mistakes. Myself, I had two engine failures due to inadequate maintenance, and discovered lethal defects in airplanes after I flew them. Stuff like that tends to make you a serious mechanic. Who wants to end up in court, or in a wreck?
One thing every mechanic should do: get a course on basic electricity and study it seriously. Much time and money is wasted on troubleshooting without the means of the shooting.
I did not make myself. I did not give myself a fascination for flight and mechanics, nor did I give myself the intelligence to learn stuff.
God did that.