Electronics Course advice

[Tubetec]

I went back into formal education in my early 20's ,City & Guilds 221 and 271 in the local third level college.
I was already miles ahead of everyone else in the class ,most of who had never picked up a soldering iron before .
Was still worthwhile doing though ,I was offered oppertunities after to go to Technical college and possibly onto university if I wanted ,I didnt as it happens ,but instead landed a position in a recording studio as trainee/house engineer.

My dad jumped into a navy cadetship  just after leaving school ,I remember him telling me one of the first things they learned was how to arrange a bunch of flowers ,you might laugh but there was method to the madness ,specially something like Navy where people are at sea for extended periods of time and the mommy raises the kids, a nicely presented bunch of flowers works wonders upon arrival home. I always had a healthy distain for anything with 'Institution of the state' written above the doorway ,and despite really loving trips to see ships and all kinds of military hardware I was never going to swallow that bait and hook routine .

 

[benb]

+++ on that.

Rod has some very good stuff on his sites and his project details always go to lengths to explain how they work and pass on the techniques and knowledge.

Cheers

Mike

This reminds me of the Heathkit assembly manuals that each had a "Circuit Description" section that was a sort of 'tour guide' to the schematic and told why just about every component was there. When I was a teenager I read through a lot of these and learned a lot from them.

The people who bought (what was left of) the company some years ago got aggressive on enforcing copyright on these manuals, so scans of them that were widely available 15 to 20 years ago are now hard (but not impossible) to find online.

 

[Tubetec]

I do love those detailed descriptions of the inner workings of equipment you used get years ago ,you just dont see it anymore nowadays .

 

[JohnRoberts]

> Apparently they are designed so that guys who lived in places where they may not have electricity could fix a sonar while being under the ocean in a sub.

Roughly.

JAN and NEETS electronics come from a heap of training manuals on EVERY subject. The Army (etc) is not good on experience or aptitude. ROTC put my father through an EE degree. When he reported for service they put him "in charge" of a mess (food) hall, then a truck test project near Pike's Peak. I have read some of his books on Mess Hall operation. If you never saw a kitchen before, these books would teach you how to serve healthy and palatable food to huge numbers of men, even in a tent. In many wars illness, often water and food-borne, caused as much trouble as bullets. The washing-up instructions are very thorough.

(While he did read the books, fortunately as a junior Lt. he was not really running the mess. The Sergeants run the Army. Sarge handed dad a thermometer and a white glove, dad poked the washtub and ran the glove inside a pot and murmered something about baseball, Sarge turned and bellowed: "the Loot says the water is pee-warm and the pots is greasy! Take them out and scrub the s*** out of them!" The long-term Sarges not only knew food, they knew how to play bad-guy / bigger-bad-guy to motivate the men.)

"Healthy and palatable food".... spoken like a civilian.  :  I was a clerk in S4 (battalion level supply), so we were over food distribution to all mess halls (and more). The cooks were generally the troops who were incapable of handling more difficult tasks (like driving a truck). Since I was in a headquarters unit we shared 1/2 a 40 bed barracks bay with the company A cooks and they were a rowdy crew. One cook was unable to spell his own name, and they put him on permanent KP for several months before he finally figured out that they can't make him do that.  I won't share my food horror stories but you see stuff working on KP that you hope would never happen in a real food service (but probably does).

Army utilization of personnel is not a model of efficiency. I was awarded a specialty MOS because of my civilian experience in electronics (while 90%+ of my basic training company was sent to advanced infantry training  ). I was slotted to maintain and repair tank targeting computers without specific training. They joke that clerks run the army and in my experience that is pretty much true. These clerks in charge scanned my test scores when I was processing in and redirected me to join them as a clerk working in battalion headquarters.  [end veer]

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back on topic, +1 to the navy electronics courses, I think I have a copy sitting around. I am mostly self taught with only a couple freshman level courses.  The ARRL handbook had some useful info about tubes.  I am not a big fan of the popular electronics books because they came out too late to help me.  A design engineer friend of mine (now RIP) bought me a copy of "Analog Circuit Design" edited by Jim Williams (also RIP), and it was an enjoyable read, while not an entry level how to book. 

+1 to learn by doing. When I was a technician I prided myself in being able to repair broken gear without schematics. A useful skill back when so many hand drawn schematics often contained errors.  I still enjoy fixing stuff, but some stuff is too cheap to bother.

Good Luck.

JR