[Hallicrafters] Re: Nobody wants to be a "technician" anymore

[Bill Gerhold]

My last story on this subject.

I started my career with General Electric Power Division.  As I was walking
through our center one day this young man was using an Simpson 260 on an old
motor stator about 500HP (I think it was synchronous).  Anyway, he was told
to measure the resistance of the field coils one at a time and see if they
were equal.  Obviously looking for a bad coil.

This is where it gets good and this is where I just walked away shaking my
head.  I stood there for a minute watching him, and each time he reconnected
to a different field coil the 260 read about 10 ohms.  So, as a relatively
young engineer and wanting to show my stuff, I said "Hi how are you." "What
are you measuring"?  His reply.  "These coils".  "I was told to do this and
if the meter went to 10, go to the next coil".  I asked "Do you know what
the ten means"?  His reply "No, it just has to go to 10".  I asked "Aren't
you interested in what the 10 means".  His reply.  "No".  This was about 25
years ago, so it continues.

K2WH

-----Original Message-----
From: hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:hallicrafters-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Ron Lawrence
kc4yoy
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 7:11 PM
To: hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Hallicrafters] Re: Nobody wants to be a "technician" anymore

Yep I agree completely.
I've been working in the electrical, electronic, equipment
design field for more than 35 years. I started with electronics
class in high school, went to Air Force Crypto School,
took classes at the local community collage and learned
the rest of it the hard way, by figuring it out as I went along.

I'm now working in a "camera repair" department for a local company,
where I'm the ONLY real technician. The rest of them are basically trained
monkeys, they were brought in and trained on one piece of equipment,
"if it does this, replace that part, if it does that, replace this part".

After I had been here a couple of months the boss wanted to add to
my list of equipment I repaired, he asked me to sit with the "technician"
that was currently repairing them and let him show me what he did.
The first thing he showed me was a layout of a PB board with number
next to some of the components. He told me that if you get one that
doesn't work, you replace the part #1 first, if that doesn't fix it you
replace part #2, and so on and so on.
He had (has) no idea what any of it does, or how the trouble shoot it.
He was brought in to the department from the warehouse because
the supervisor liked him.
He's just one of many, well not as many now days, we're down from
22 people to 9, my end date is May 7th, it was April 7th but I got
extended for 30 days.
The company was bought last year and all of our jobs are moving
to St. Louis. The only problem is the folks in St. Louis can't seem
to figure out how to repair the equipment I work on so they extend
my time...

I'm reminded of an old SciFi story about a whole civilization that
had gone back to cave man times because no one could remember
how to fix all the machines.

I hope I don't live that long....

73, Ron W4RON
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/index.html

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