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Engineering Di's


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This is my first summer with a licence (I'm in heli ops), and dealing with newfound responsibilities. Engineering DI's at the end of the day was something I always took as a given working as an apprentice. It seemed to be standard procedure at the previous companies I worked for, and all but one or two contract engineers I worked with operated the same way. Basically, as far as I could tell, it was standard industry practice.

 

Now, I'm newly licenced, and working off a small base with a guy who's got a good 15 years experience on me, and telling me that I'm more or less wasting my time staying to recieve A/C and do DI's in the evening (I was quote "babysitting pilots"). I like to think I take pride in my job and want to stick to my guns, but I don't want to seem like the proverbial 'young, dumb, and full of come' new AME. Also, it's pretty much just me and him for engineers on the base, so I don't want to make it too personal (I still gotta work with the guy).

 

Any input? (from engineering and ops alike)

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You should never get slagged for looking at your machines too much. :up: DON'T let the pilots give up on their D.I. though, cause a whole bunch of them will if you let 'em. They should be looking at the machine like the guy before them is trying to kill them. FYI I'm a AME/pilot. my $0.02

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There is nothing wrong with doing a proper walk round before and after flight, apart from it being your job, it gives you a feel of how the cab is going and will give you a heads-up of things you have to fix right now or can actually "keep an eye on" if you know what i mean.

 

As for waiting to recover the cab at the end of flying,

if there is anything wrong with it on return, is it not better to get a full technical de-brief from the aircrew at the time?

Rather than leaving it till the morning when you may not even get a report let alone a full picture of the snag.

 

At the end of the day, you could be going up in it, so you'd want everything to be sweet.

 

And on final thing,

Never, ever, ever, ever,,,, "pen" a check without even giving it the slightest of looks!

It's always quicker to actually do the job right rather than trying to explain why you didn't.

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I assume you mean "daily inspections" I’ve found that often what the pilot writes in the log book is NOT EXACTLY what happened. It’s much better it comes from the horses mouth, you can ask the pilot questions that a log book can’t answer. ;) If you want to fly in the morning it's much better to find the problems the night before. :up:

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If there's a problem or issue with the aircraft, I want to be able to address it at the end of the day when I'm not rushed, as opposed to looking for a fix first thing in the morning when the customers are getting ready to go flying.

 

Don't allow yourself to get bullied into lowering your standards.

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hmmmm, D.I....means DAILY....not pencil-whip. its your licence, and often as not, your *** in that seat. do your job, and ignore old-timer telling you not to. If the machine is a bell light, it will probably be fine....but you never know until you look. If its a medium, it definitely requires a good look, no exceptions. when you look at everything everyday, you can 'trend-monitor' everything....you'll see the parts get sloppy or loose, a dribble of oil here and there only gets worse, not better. you'll have your parts ordered and ready to install when a drip becomes a gush...your old-timer will look stupid and you won't.

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How would you ansewer your boss, if you didn't do a post flight, and the A/c ended up grounded in the morning pre-flight?

I'm sure your company has a penalty clause attached to the contract if the A/C can't make the flights.

It's 1 thing if it breaks and your waiting for parts etc and it dosen't fly, its another if its grounded because you didn't take the time to look at the machine when it got back and you could have addressed the issue 8-12 hours earlier.

 

If you are in the middle of nowhere, what else do you have to do other than look after the machine?

Do your best everyday. Don't worry about what the other guy says. Let him be the sloppy 1.

Cheers Nick.

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