Non-Obvious Skills to Learn as a CPL

[Slick Goodlin]

The other night I was thinking about important skills I have that have come in handy as a professional pilot and somehow the single most important cost saver has been this:

Learn to solder.

Seems like every thousand hours or so I have to do a repair on my headset or accessory and in the long run I’ve probably saved a couple thousand dollars and countless down time, as well as the need to own a backup unit. So with that, I implore the up and coming CPLs of the world to learn to use a multimeter to probe wires and connections, and pick up a cheap soldering iron for your home tool kit.

As for the headsets, there isn’t any one brand that’s consistently let me down. More often than not the problem after a while is a broken wire or poorly made connection somewhere inside. Oh, and the adapter I bought to make my headset agree with the work plane is overpriced trash, bad enough that the next time it breaks I’m just re-wiring the whole damn thing.

Come to think of it, my entire next headset may just be home made so I can have total control of materials and workmanship standards. Is that a thing people do? Is there a community of headset-making weirdos?

[Colonel]

Wow. That’s a high bar. As Mike Finnegan says, keep lowering the bar until your expectations are met. In that vein of thought….

I would be happy if someone could

Check and set tire pressure
Check and set oil level
Clean the Windshield and leading edges
Tie a knot on a rope

Jesus. I think I’m more demanding than you!

[digits]

I don't know how people manage to break all their headsets. Or let me rephrase. I don't know how people can be so careless with their headsets. Leaving it on a dash all day when maintenance is scheduled to work in the cockpit, leaving it in the plane in the sun for 3 days because they are too lazy to put it in their bags. Resting body parts against the plugs while flying. Throwing it in the back of a car without any case.

Drives me nuts. I feel bad when it's in my bag and I put a little bit too much pressure on the bag.

[Colonel]

Ok. Electrical is a big deal.

Connectors are going to be the source of most of your problems. For example I had this ancient
Dave Clamp headset, I took some metal polish and got rid of the corrosion on the metal connectors
so you wouldn't get that annoying crackle and then spin them.

The other thing you need to learn about, is bend radius. Two things factor here:

1) the larger the diameter of the metal conductor, the larger the bend radius to avoid damage
2) number of bend cycles

You can't do much about #2 but you can help #1 by putting a piece of heat shrink over your connector
and wire, which has the effect of increasing your bend radius and extending the number of cycles
before the metal conductor breaks. Most quality vendors do that. If you buy cheap stuff, put some
heat shrink on!

Hope this helps. I used to be a EE back when the earth was cooling. Look closely at your connectors,
strain relief the harnesses, and look closely at where the wires go through the bulkheads. With the
vibration in airplanes, if the grommets are missing/damaged it's not unusual to have the insulation
wear away. I had a mag p-lead ground on me, from that.

[Slick Goodlin]

I don't know how people manage to break all their headsets

Who, me? I take excellent care of my stuff, and my headset is basically in its hard case with the cord carefully coiled in as large a radius as possible any time it’s not on my head. I don’t know if massive temperature changes cause accelerated breakdown of materials but the reality is that traditionally I have to do a repair of some sort or another every thousand hours.

[mcrit]

Who the hell can’t solder?

[Slick Goodlin]

Who the hell can’t solder?

Plenty of folks.

[Colonel]

I can drive a Weller ok but my SMT rework is shit.

I get kids with these microscope soldering stations to add fly wires for the logic analyzer. Golden for target bringup.

Also, people whine abour my cold solder joints. Like cold fusion, I thought all the cool kids were into that now. I thought it was cool to be chill? Or chill to be cool?

[mcrit]

I really wish I had time to learn how to weld.

[Squaretail]

I really wish I had time to learn how to weld.

Its easier than you think. Depends on the type of welding, and its difficult to do well, but so is everything. These days a wire feed unit is pretty cheap, I got one on sale at Canadian Tire for like less than $100. Don't buy an old flip down mask, I stupidly kept using mine for a long time, then one day found an automatic one on sale and was like, fuck I was dumb for holding out. One of those once you learn one way, its tough to change, but you'd think I'd learn that lesson by now.

Being able to weld makes you invaluable around an airport. I mean the amount of broken tow bars I've put back together over the years... well I should have been charging money. Probably a good hobby gig making those.

Other skills one might need as a CPL.... First learn how a Briggs and Stratton works. There's a lot of things around the airport that will probably run on these. Most importantly is most any sort of mover, because some day hopefully you'll graduate up from airplanes that just need a strong back and weak mind to move around. Don't be the guy who's standing around like a dud because you don't know what a choke is. Also learn the principles of backing stuff up so you don't have to take ten tries to get in the vicinity of the hangar door, or worse fuck up a nose wheel. Or tail wheel.

Its also useful to know how to non-destructively, um, access locked airplanes. Most can be gotten into with a screwdriver, pair pf pliers, or maybe even your own key. Sooner or later someone is going to unhelpfully park and airplane in an inconvenient spot for you. In front of your hangar, in front of the fuel pump, or block off a taxiway. They will lock the plane and leave the park brake on. Be careful moving someone else's airplane, it isn't the airplane's fault its pilot is a self centered ass.