Non-Obvious Skills to Learn as a CPL

[Colonel]

Get a death wheel (sideface grinder with cutoff wheels) and a mig welder. Flux core wire so no tank.

This allows you to reshape metal.

[Squaretail]

Get a death wheel (sideface grinder with cutoff wheels) and a mig welder. Flux core wire so no tank.

This allows you to reshape metal.

Death wheel? That's a bit much. You'd have to be spectacularly clumsy to kill yourself with one. Maim yourself badly? Sure. I'd usually refer to one as an angle grinder. If you're just hobbying, you only need a 6" one. If you're more serious, get two, one to have a wire wheel on. Make sure to use face protection using them. See the maiming above.

Welding tables are also surprisingly cheap and useful for more than just welding. Makes doing small work a lot easier.

[Slick Goodlin]

Get a death wheel (sideface grinder with cutoff wheels) and a mig welder. Flux core wire so no tank.

This allows you to reshape metal.

I love my metal glue gun but it’s kind of a gateway drug. My brother is a killer with a TIG torch so some day I’m going to bug him to help me level up.

[Squaretail]

To add to the skill list... Any other skill! Be an interesting person to work with! Too many working pilots are dreadfully boring people having "specialized" in flying a type of airplane or maybe even one particular airplane, and my God they're a bunch of useless tits when it comes to anything else. The only thing they'll talk about is their ideal "big iron". Thank the Gods I don't have to share a cockpit with these people.

[Slick Goodlin]

To add to the skill list... Any other skill! Be an interesting person to work with! Too many working pilots are dreadfully boring people having "specialized" in flying a type of airplane or maybe even one particular airplane, and my God they're a bunch of useless tits when it comes to anything else. The only thing they'll talk about is their ideal "big iron". Thank the Gods I don't have to share a cockpit with these people.

Ew yes, that. Also if you make good money be sure to spend a measurable amount on something that makes you happy and leaves an impression on your life. It blows my mind how many guys I fly with who have ordinary boring lives, make close to $300k a year with their overtime, and are somehow living paycheck to paycheck with nothing to show for it. It’s nuts. I’m at the bottom of the totem pole and living ten times the life they are. Just blows my mind.

[Squaretail]

I love my metal glue gun but it’s kind of a gateway drug. My brother is a killer with a TIG torch so some day I’m going to bug him to help me level up.

If you're really hard core, you weld stuff with a forge, hammer and anvil. That's a lot of brute work that I'm not really up to these days though.

[David MacRay]

Setting the TPMS sensors for a 2006 Avalanche.

[Slick Goodlin]

If you're really hard core, you weld stuff with a forge, hammer and anvil. That's a lot of brute work that I'm not really up to these days though.

I’m not that hard core plus I lack the imagination to see where I’d apply that to the airplanes and reproduction vintage race cars of my dreams.

Forge welding is still pretty badass though.

[Colonel]

I’m not very badass because I think stick/arc welding is pretty crude. Bubble gun welds. But it works!

It’s funny, the welding snobs say you can’t mig an aircraft fuselage - only tig or oxy. I don’t think they were in Central America when Skip Stewart broke the tailwheel off his Pitts and he got some guy that didn’t speak any english to stick weld it back on.

You don’t understand how hard Skip flies. He bent an I-strut once. He broke the seat. He broke the gas tank.

[Slick Goodlin]

They MIG weld Citabria fuselages together, the factory has an approved process for it.