[R-390] Soldering School

[Duffy Floyd]

The Navy had its version of soldering school for nukes called ETMS
(Electronics Technician Maintenance School) which was 5 weeks long. I
attended in 1984. The first 2 weeks were soldering for 8 hours a day 5 days
a week. It was also based on the NASA High Reliability Soldering Standards.
To the previous poster..yes one standard concerning the amount of solder
used was that the individual strands of the soldered wires had to still have
definition following the soldering process. Joints were inspected with a 10X
magnifying glass. The ends of the strands of wire also had to be solder
coated. The biggest pain in the butt was pre-tinning the stranded copper
wires to be soldered since there was a spec on how far into the insulation
the solder could wick. 

 

The last 3 weeks were troubleshooting, much of it on equipment I had never
seen. They taught a 7 step troubleshooting method that did not require you
to be an expert on the operation of the equipment in order to effectively
troubleshoot it. Of course you did have to be strong on schematic reading
and analyzing circuits. 

 

Duffy

N3JHA