Teaching of hand skills

[Talk Wrench]

Recently, we had an incident at work whereby a cabin fitter pushed his hand into one of those fabled positions where manual dexterity failed and quite literally, the bloke became trapped in the aiframe.

His hand and arm quickly started to swell and he became distressed. Trying to free him was impossible and he was clearly panicked.

We had to call the airport fire service because there was no way we could free the bloke by ourselves.

Along came the emergency services and the airport doctor who anaesthatised him for starters and gave him a lot of first aid to stabilise him. It became clear that his arm was well and truly stuck so the fire service took control of the situation and cut the airframe to bits with a pneumatic metal saw, whilst pumping coolant to the work surfaces to reduce arcing and sparking as well as reducing the impact from the heat created during the said extrication.

Fortunately, the bloke was okay and spent two days in hospital for his sins.

Cue one serious airframe repair.


Within one week, the damaged structure was de-riveted, cut out and repaired back to confomity. The skills of the guys who did the repair was incredible and I take my hat off to them for the speed and professionalism with which they performed the job.

But it got me thinking. I remember the hacking and bashing phase of my RAF training and realise the value of that training. Before my RAF training, I spent two years at tech college learning about material tech, tech draughting, lathing, milling, grinding, CNC and welding complete with the practice on the machines themselves. We had to produce high quality products to drawing to pass the course. I can honestly say that although I could produce good, high tolerance products, I learned more about manufacturing from the days of hacking and bashing during techy training.

Now, considering the airframe repair, the guys who did it were commanding around 60 quid an hour, all expenses paid as well. Two of the guys from the team of five were ex RAF and in my (biased) viewpoint, got the job done as quick as. Two of the five could only be considered as highly paid assistants, but that's civvy street for ya!

When it comes to the focus on hand skills training in the RAF, is it still as good as it was twenty plus years ago or is it just an education in how to use a screwdriver these days?

Is the training within the Royal Air Force robust enough to give people the skills or have we gone to a system where real hand skills training has disappeared?

 

[Gord]

Skin,frame and stringer repairs are all in a day's work for an aircraft structures tech' in civvy street. Mind you, many of the lads where I worked had military experience, probably around 50% of them. We had three Taiwanese guys who got their experience doing repairs to Yankee airframes during the Vietnam war, one lad was ex Uruguayan air force, several of them were Scottish and Indian immigrants the rest were Canadians with the exception of myself and one yank ex USAF A&P mech'.

We would quite often do fly ins to out bases in order to carry out repairs on aircraft that had been damaged although most of these repairs were of the temporary type, carried out in order to be able to fly the aircraft to a maintenance base where in depth inspections and permanent repairs could be carried out. Having said that, a fair number of the temp' repairs we did were, upon inspection, considered permanent repairs.

I loved that kind of work as it took you away from routine maintenance operations not to mention the fact that it gave you a sense of pride of ownership when the aircraft took off in good nick.

 

[Talk Wrench]

Skin,frame and stringer repairs are all in a day's work for an aircraft structures tech' in civvy street. Mind you, many of the lads where I worked had military experience, probably around 50% of them. We had three Taiwanese guys who got their experience doing repairs to Yankee airframes during the Vietnam war, one lad was ex Uruguayan air force, several of them were Scottish and Indian immigrants the rest were Canadians with the exception of myself and one yank ex USAF A&P mech'.

We would quite often do fly ins to out bases in order to carry out repairs on aircraft that had been damaged although most of these repairs were of the temporary type, carried out in order to be able to fly the aircraft to a maintenance base where in depth inspections and permanent repairs could be carried out. Having said that, a fair number of the temp' repairs we did were, upon inspection, considered permanent repairs.

I loved that kind of work as it took you away from routine maintenance operations not to mention the fact that it gave you a sense of pride of ownership when the aircraft took off in good nick.

Mate,


We were lucky because the damaged frames were just a little bit close to the pressure bulkhead. In my environment,
repairs can cost more than cash.

I can certainly agree with you when it comes down to a sense of pride and ownership of problems. Every time I see one of MY aircraft take off, I feel proud.

 

[Gord]

Mate,


We were lucky because the damaged frames were just a little bit close to the pressure bulkhead. In my environment,
repairs can cost more than cash.

I can certainly agree with you when it comes down to a sense of pride and ownership of problems. Every time I see one of MY aircraft take off, I feel proud.

Yup, pressure bulkhead repairs can be dicey, remember the Air Japan 747, that had the pressure bulkhead blow out and it took out all the hydraulics for horizontal stab' and the rudder and I'm not sure but perhaps the ailerons too due to the routing of the hydraulic lines. The thing flew around for hours with the pilot trying to control it by simply fluctuating the engine power on each wing. It eventually ran out of fuel and crashed into the side of a mountain killing almost all on board.

It turns out that a Boeing crew had been flown in from Seattle I believe to fix damage done to the bulkhead due to the aircraft having bounced it's tail on a heavy landing and for some reason the crew had split the repair patch into two sections (probably for ease of installation) instead of using one large plate, meaning that the stress was loaded onto one row of rivets instead of all three that usually take the load and over time, the stress from compression and decompression had finally become too much for the rivets to take and they had sheared resulting in explosive decompression in that area, ripping out part of the rear fuselage, the fin and the hydraulic system.

It had taken so long between the original blow out and the time it crashed that they found letters from passengers in the wreckage saying goodbye to their loved ones and hand written wills from those who had thought to ensure their final wishes were known. There were 524 people aboard as being a commuter aircraft flying between major Japanese cities they had installed seats in the cargo hold as well as the regular passenger deck 520 of those people were killed in the crash. Of course the fact that they were short hop flights also meant that the cycle of compression/decompression was increased dramatically since most flights would only be about an hour in duration, drastically increasing the stress load on the bulkhead.

 

[Tin basher]

Is the training within the Royal Air Force robust enough to give people the skills or have we gone to a system where real hand skills training has disappeared?

In the wonderful world of training the tin-bashing module dealing with skin repairs takes around 170hrs of the course or just over 4 weeks of which only 4 days is theory based the rest is hands on tools. Turning sheet metal into swarf on a daily basis working in both metric and imperial using a wide range of air powered tools and with an excellent chance of practicing your sweeping skills by pushing the brush at the end of each day.

 

[Talk Wrench]

I've seen 71 do some pretty nifty repairs of late so there's obviously a bit of skill out there despite what some would have you believe.

My opinion of the guys at 71 who do this kind of work is that they pure mechanical master magicians. I'm assuming they get a lot of external specialist training as well as in house training?

 

[Gord]

My opinion of the guys at 71 who do this kind of work is that they pure mechanical master magicians. I'm assuming they get a lot of external specialist training as well as in house training?

We used to get a bit of the usual flack from Aircraft Mechanics, ie those who changed parts on engines, in the usual fitters vs riggers banter but a mate of mine, an Aussi who also happened to be an Aircraft Mechanic as opposed to a stuctures mech' said to me "I can't understand why anyone would put down "Sheeties", they're the guys who can make all kinds of sh!te for you that we're just not capable of doing.

I think that just about says it all. Anyone can remove a few bolts and replace a crapped out hydraulic pump or whatever other part may be u/s but it takes a modicum of knowledge to fabricate an aircraft part from a flat sheet of metal.

Having said that, I've worked with lads who were capable of working in both trades. Now, the avionics lads, they were a different breed altogether and I would likely be lost if I attempted to do the sort of thing they used to do, although after buying the old church I now live in and converting it into a home with three bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen I and my son did all the wiring and plumbing and installed all the heating and ventilation ducts required to do so. No my son is not an electrician or a plumber, he's a welder to trade but we used common sense and followed the appropriate plumbing and wiring codes as set out by the government.

 

[ady eflog]

My opinion of the guys at 71 who do this kind of work is that they pure mechanical master magicians. I'm assuming they get a lot of external specialist training as well as in house training?

Having just visited Cosford on this very subject, hand skills are alive and well and all technical trades that go through Cosford go through Hand Skills Flight before even touching power tools. As for the lads on 71(IR) Sqn they attend SRTC in house training and do a 7 week, 2 part course with a portfolio inbetween, its then down to time on jobs to build up the experience.