I started classes in September of 2021 with a hybrid system of theory lectures being online (watching on my laptop in a dorm room) and practical classes being done either in a subject specific shop, or the campus aircraft hangar.
The highlight of the term? ‘Composite Repair’ and ‘Piston Engines’ subjects in the second semester.
As this was my first time ever attending college, and it also being some 33 years after high school, I’m happy with my grades for that term. I did choose to make a change however, that being the switch from General Aircraft Maintenance over to the Aviation Structures Program (ASR).
As someone that has always enjoyed making things, building and repairing airframes and their components, rather than changing oil and inflating tires, is more me.
Pratt & Whitney radial engine in the hangar at Canadore.
One of the highlights of the second semester was trouble shooting and solving an ongoing issue with the school’s Beechcraft King Air. One of the maintenance tasks for the students was to test the de-icing system of the aircraft’s propellers. Unfortunately, for years, this was not able to be done because the de-icing system was actually broken and nobody really knew why. There were some theories, but nothing for sure.
As was often the case, my task for that week had been completed early, and I was asked by the instructors to try and trouble shoot the de-icing snag. ‘Just poke around and see if you can find anything’, was the only instruction. As this had been an ongoing problem for years, there didn’t seem to be much expectation of any results. Little did they know…
My hangar partner spent about an hour pouring over the wiring schematics for the aircraft, while I poked around inside. The schematic indicated a fuse box, so I went on the hunt for it. I found it by removing a seat and lifting carpet, and removing a floor panel. Then, sticking my head into the hole in the floor, I found it attached on the inside of a floor runner, with the only way to ‘see it’ being holding my phone in the space and taking a photo. We discovered that 4 fuses had not only burned out, but had turned to powder. This area clearly had not been looked at since the aircraft left real service a decade or more ago. We didn’t even have those fuses in the tool crib. After scrounging around the various electrical labs for replacements, I was finally able to replace each fuse purely by feel because it was not possible to see what I was doing.
Sure enough, once those fuses were replaced, the King Air’s propeller de-ice system came on with no issues. The two of us had solved an issue that nobody else had been able to do for years.
The repaired King Air fuse box. Note the burn marks from the old fuses.