The Aircraft Engineering Training Machine

[ady eflog]

If you can do a fibreglass repair you can probably do a carbon fibre repair, the process is similar, with having to taper sand the repair area to ensure that you get down to the bottom of the damage and give sufficient original material showing on each of the plies so that the new plies you install adhere to the original material, following the direction of the original plies, after which it is simply a case of choosing the correct menu on the hot bond machine and following the lay up instructions with regard to the vacuum and temp of the repair for the time specified all this info can be gleaned from either the SRM or the AMM. Of course one should have some training to ensure that what you read in the manual is what you do in practice.

As I said before, cleanliness is imperative and taper sanding is not always easy as it is possible to sand through two or more layers of material thinking it is only one layer. Some carbon fibre skins may have as many as nine or more plies, each of them offset from the previous and following one by a specified number of degrees and new plies must be installed in the same direction as the one it is replacing to provide original strength to the repair area.

Lots of fun.

To work on composites its a 2 week Q course at the FRP School at Wittering, then you can be Auth'd to do the job.

 

[ady eflog]

What about Station Workshops? Should they be the ones updating their skills to work with carbon fibre etc? They actually exist to make and repair aircraft parts not make gizzits in the Falklands.

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk 2

The only trade group 5 personnel that touch composites are those at Hedley Court making prosthetic limbs. otherwise you have to be TG1 to do the Q Course to allow you to hold the Auth.

 

[Stevienics]

Pfft.

Puma sponsons and cowlings. Repair it, coat it with araldite and lot and lts of black thick paint. Job done.

 

[Harry B'Stard]

The vibes I get from the service lads who come here as instructors is that it need modernising, on the mechanical side at least. The RAF needs to ask itself one big question..

What do we need our technicians to be able to know/do to operate effectively on today's aircraft?

Its called a TNA (Training Needs Analysis); one was supposed to have been done prior to 2007 when the current AMM/FT scheme was in the planning stages but it wasn't.

Secondly it needs to ask itself....

Who is best placed to write the course once we know whats needed?

The answer to this has invariably been 'the current instructor cadre' which IMHO is where it all really goes horribly wrong. The current instructor cadre knows how to deliver the stuff it currently has using the kit it has at its disposal that's certainly true, but what its utterly rubbish at (again on the mechanical side) is recognizing and accepting when material has become obsolete and knowing what new technology to include. You really wouldn't believe some of the tears and tantrums when the removal of someones sacred cow gets mooted! The result is that each iteration of a course simply becomes a re-hash of the previous iteration which was in turn an iteration of the one before that which was in turn....you get the idea. Same images (some still had Buccaneers and Phantoms in for crying out loud), same manuals, same lame PowerPoint with yellow on blue text...yawn.

It needs a fresh look with fresh eyes and if those fresh eyes who say we no longer need to teach skin metal repair or hydromechanical fuel control then so-be-it, get rid. If we need to introduce new technologies to meet current aircraft specs then so be it, even if it means increased use of simulators. If it means introducing new teaching tools and technologies, so be it. If the instructors don't like it - there's the door. Sentimentality can no longer play a part.

A good few years ago when I was across the corridor from PSBM we started a project looking into the relevance of what we taught. Wee Rab, Lurch and myself began collecting any Q-notes that we could lay our hands on for aircraft that were in service that the trainees were likely to encounter.

We were successful in some respects, some aircraft types were more than willing to provide us with assistance, others were not so accommodating.

The project floundered leaving us with a collection of random Q-Course notes in a rack on the wall.

I'd wager that rack is still there... gathering dust.

HTB

 

[Tin basher]

leaving us with a collection of random Q-Course notes in a rack on the wall. I'd wager that rack is still there...HTB

Oh you mean the reference libraryDT_Xtremez_15: