9GClub
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2004
- Posts
- 325
Back to the original question posed by no1pilot2000......
I'm in A&P school right now and very much enjoying it. The math and physics review typically comes at you early in the program, and it kicks a lot of guys' butts. It is NOT particularly difficult, but if you're rusty in those subject areas, pay more attention to them. A couple classmates are pretty good on the line and in the shop, but the math almost knocked them out of the program in the first month.
That being said, I would suggest that there are two critical characteristics that every aspiring A&P should possess. The first is mechanical aptitude. My experience has been that this really can't be taught. Some guys have a knack for working with their hands and others just don't. It becomes fairly evident who's who during the first few days in the shop. A separate but related skill is what I'd called mechanical instinct. Some guys can simply put their hands on a plane and tell what's wrong with it. I exaggerate but you get the idea. This kind of diagnostic intuition grows somewhat with experience--- but you can have all the intuition in the world and still be an idiot with a wrench in your hands. Possess aptitude and aspire to instinct.
The second critical characteristic is curiosity. Lots of C's there, wow. I'm doing well in the program, but I know that 1) the "labs" that we do in the shop are only somewhat transferable to the real world, and 2) I will still know next to nothing when I attain my legal ability to sign for crap. I take flak from my classmates because I'm always ripping stuff apart in the hangar whenever we have a break. I started troubleshooting a fuel leak in one of our planes the other day because I wanted to learn something, and one of my instructors basically handed me the assignment and told me to figure it out. Two days, a lot of spilled gas, and a bazillion phonecalls later, I've almost got a new fuel cell on order-- and I've got a whole heck of a lot more knowledge than the other guys in my class (but I still need some more info, so I'm getting ready to post a new thread here in this forum...). And this is "extracurricular." That same instructor is very generous with his own aircraft and those that he works on, and I learned more in 15 hours at the airport with him and some other guys than I could have in a month of classes. You've gotta go the extra mile and figure this stuff out, it's a LOT of material. Not hard, but your effectiveness as a mechanic improves drastically with real experience.
In summary:
1.) Have mechanical aptitude, seek to develop mechanical instinct.
2.) Go the extra mile and learn stuff, it's not gonna fall into your brain.
Good luck, and feel free to ask questions as they come up.
-9G
I'm in A&P school right now and very much enjoying it. The math and physics review typically comes at you early in the program, and it kicks a lot of guys' butts. It is NOT particularly difficult, but if you're rusty in those subject areas, pay more attention to them. A couple classmates are pretty good on the line and in the shop, but the math almost knocked them out of the program in the first month.
That being said, I would suggest that there are two critical characteristics that every aspiring A&P should possess. The first is mechanical aptitude. My experience has been that this really can't be taught. Some guys have a knack for working with their hands and others just don't. It becomes fairly evident who's who during the first few days in the shop. A separate but related skill is what I'd called mechanical instinct. Some guys can simply put their hands on a plane and tell what's wrong with it. I exaggerate but you get the idea. This kind of diagnostic intuition grows somewhat with experience--- but you can have all the intuition in the world and still be an idiot with a wrench in your hands. Possess aptitude and aspire to instinct.
The second critical characteristic is curiosity. Lots of C's there, wow. I'm doing well in the program, but I know that 1) the "labs" that we do in the shop are only somewhat transferable to the real world, and 2) I will still know next to nothing when I attain my legal ability to sign for crap. I take flak from my classmates because I'm always ripping stuff apart in the hangar whenever we have a break. I started troubleshooting a fuel leak in one of our planes the other day because I wanted to learn something, and one of my instructors basically handed me the assignment and told me to figure it out. Two days, a lot of spilled gas, and a bazillion phonecalls later, I've almost got a new fuel cell on order-- and I've got a whole heck of a lot more knowledge than the other guys in my class (but I still need some more info, so I'm getting ready to post a new thread here in this forum...). And this is "extracurricular." That same instructor is very generous with his own aircraft and those that he works on, and I learned more in 15 hours at the airport with him and some other guys than I could have in a month of classes. You've gotta go the extra mile and figure this stuff out, it's a LOT of material. Not hard, but your effectiveness as a mechanic improves drastically with real experience.
In summary:
1.) Have mechanical aptitude, seek to develop mechanical instinct.
2.) Go the extra mile and learn stuff, it's not gonna fall into your brain.
Good luck, and feel free to ask questions as they come up.
-9G
