Beginners can become skilled users and restorers of any type of equipment if properly mentored. But if they are left to languish for themselves it can be a very steep hill to climb.
Before they start digging into complex equipment they should learn a few basics such as troubleshooting techniques as well as the more salient aspects such as proper soldering methods, and how to treat sensitive and mechanically delicate equipment. And, again, if they do not learn the proper approaches to doing so they can carry that behavior for years to come.’
I have a broadcast client who decided that they should have an in-house person to maintain and manage their technical plant. In response the General Manager assigned the responsibility to an on-air disk jockey who had no technical experience at all. On top of it they were also given the title “Director of Engineering” with the expectation that the will be the “go-to” person in times of equipment and systems failures. This included the high-power transmitters with their 10 kV high voltage power supplies.
The person tried to make it clear that he needed some technical training to support his new role so the manager enrolled him in a mail-order technical school to help him learn. But after a few years of trying to learn the basics and my helping him try to learn fundamental theories (ohm’s law, DC circuits, etc.) he has backed off of the learning and I still have to go in and maintain their equipment. But now he is the manager over outside technical people (mainly me) and my 53+ years of electronic design/manufacturing and service experience. And he is still the “Director of Engineering.”
When I do work for this client, the DOE always accompanies me. And I try hard to mentor him and teach him how to deal with failures and where to look when certain symptoms appear. That is the least I can do given the high liability of his employer to foolishly assign a possibly dangerous task to someone who has little understanding of what he may get into. I answer his questions, have brought him up to speed in his soldering and basic mechanical maintenance techniques, familiarized him more with the equipment he is responsible for and continue to teach a little electronics theory when possible. He still needs to learn basic operation of test equipment but it is somewhat obvious that he does not possess the inclination to completely understand given the need to know areas such as RF and other.
Such a high-level assignment to a person of this caliber draws both positive and negative comments from others. Personally I would prefer that he at least have a reasonable background in electronics before launching off on a profession like this especially from a need to understand how dangerous some of this equipment can be and how easy it could be to break more things than fix them. But that is not my responsibility given the choice made by my clients management.
Some of these underpinnings can be applied to members of this and other groups. For those who are total neophytes to electronics and try to tackle more complex equipment before learning some of the basics it can definitely be an uphill battle to understand what or how to do something. And having some ability to do it right before taking action will help suppress doing possibly more damage to the item they work on. But, again, that requires mentoring from an approach that is not necessarily found in many of the replies on this site. To surmise, it has to be more of theory accompanying the reply rather than a “look here” or “fix this” if these people are going to learn how to do it. I am not saying that all of the replies are anemic in this aspect for there are those who do take the time to thoroughly explain the “why’s” and I applaud them. But all of us must think along the lines of helping educate that person who obviously has bought their first piece of non-working test equipment and is rather clueless as to how to make it work so that they can continue on to learn more about this crazy world of electronics.
I might add mentoring was the way I started my electronics life at the wee age of 13. I had met the Chief Engineer of a local television station and expressed my desire to learn more about television technology. Having expected to merely hang around the station I became surprised when I found that he had better ideas on how I should learn. It resulted in his driving across town each Friday night, picking me up and taking me to the station. At midnight when the station would sign off (in those days) he would reserve the remainder of his overnight engineering shift to sit down and teach me electronics coupled with helping him work on the equipment all the while explaining how it worked.
The result was my ability to get a job at the station when I turned 15 helping him properly maintain the equipment and the rest was history. After graduating from high school I left the station and went out to obtain my engineering degree launching me into the fields of design engineering for the majority of my career while always owing the start of that career to him. And I continue to carry on that desire to teach others in similar ways whenever possible.
Greg
