Apprenticeships

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henry crun

Apprenticeships

#1 Post by henry crun » Sat Sep 05, 2015 10:27 pm

I started my apprenticeship late 1961 in the aerospace industry as a 6-6 student apprentice. This meant six months of each year at the company and six months study at the local college, leading to an external London University degree.

Our first six months was spent in formal training at the apprentice training school, learning engineering drawing and workshop practice. In those day the drawing was all manual, using drawing boards with right-angled rules kept level by a pantograph arrangement. The workshop practice included use of hand tools and machine tools to make our own toolkits, and some formal lectures on materials, tool angles and heat treatment.

After six months attending college for full-time study it was back to work, and we were split up and sent around the various parts of the company to gain work experience. The biggest project at that time was the DH Trident autopilot and flight system, this was nearing completion, and working in the Triplex lab on the first autoland system was real eye-opener. The Simplex lab was working on a single-channel flight system. There were lots of other labs specialising in gyros, rate gyros, micro relays, test equipment, materials technology, environmental test and so on, so there was no shortage of interesting things to learn.

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Re: Apprenticeships

#2 Post by Alisoncc » Sat Sep 05, 2015 10:49 pm

A bit of a late comer Henry. Started as aircraft apprentice at RAF Locking in Sept 1960, but was assessed as suitable nearly a year before at RAF Cardington when I was a mere stripling of 15. They said to finish my GCE's first. To think I could have gone down Pit instead with lots of rellies. Might have been preferable. :))

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Re: Apprenticeships

#3 Post by om15 » Sun Sep 06, 2015 6:19 pm

RAF Halton is where I started, 47 years ago this week. The objective,

To produce advanced tradesmen of good education and to develop in them such qualities of character sense of responsibility, leadership, and pride of service – as will fit them for a progressive career within the Royal Air Force.


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Re: Apprenticeships

#4 Post by Blacksheep » Mon Sep 07, 2015 1:48 pm

Graduated from Halton first week in August 1966. They don't do apprenticeships like that any more. Three years of intensive indoctrination and that obsession with quality and getting it right is still with me.

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Re: Apprenticeships

#5 Post by Pinky the pilot » Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:06 am

I was offered an apprenticeship when I left school at the end of 1971 and like a bloody fool, I turned it down. X(

Really didn't know what I wanted to do at the time. Actually had earlier wanted to join the RAAF and get onto a Pilot's course but realised midway through my secondary schooling that it just would not happen. Simply didn't have the 'smarts' and I also had to start wearing glasses.

I now wish that my Parents had insisted that I at least gave the apprenticeship a go but unfortunately they did not.

Such is life! :-?
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Re: Apprenticeships

#6 Post by Alisoncc » Thu Oct 22, 2015 4:00 am

Like Blacksheep did an RAF apprenticeship, except mine was at RAF Locking, their No 1 Radio School. That has held me in good stead for the whole of my life. It was so incredibly thorough, even now I remember the different waveguide propagation modes from 1962.

Without wishing to offend Blacksheep, the Air Force initially streamed applicants as to whether they joined as Boy Entrants or Apprentices. Sat my entrance exams at RAF Cardington in 1959. Then if an apprentice whether they went to RAF Locking to study electronics or RAF Halton for engines, airframes, instuments, electrics, etc. At Locking over the three years we were streamed into either ground or air trades. Then the air trades were streamed into transport, fighter or bomber, with bomber aircraft having by far the most sophisticated electronics of their time. Students being further streamed as air radar, air wireless or both - air radio.

After three years at Locking I graduated from the RAF's No 1 Radio School at an Air Radio Fitter (Bomber), meaning that of the initial probably 600+ applicants for that "intake" I would have been pretty close to the top in smarts. Shortly after making Cpl Tech, which as a liney Air Radio Fitter on a "V" Bomber station was no mean feat. The electronics on a Vulcan were the absolute cutting-edge at the time, and I got to play with them all on my own. Someone commented on the other place that working on "V" Bomber electronics was the early 1960's equivalent to working on the Apollo missions kit later. It felt like it to. Magic !!

Over thirty years later, in 1995, when a software company I was running became insolvent I was able to get casual work as a radio techy back in aviation. That was after a good twenty years out of it. Getting to do all the initial GPS installs on the Flying Doctor aircraft in Far North Qeensland. The guy who ran the workshop reckoned I was the only one with the nouse that he could trust to complete it - even as a casual.

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