Avionics News April 2015 - 75

see a foreman coming and broadcasting, "foreman to hangar 6," which was
six hangars from where I was working.
Capital Airlines added a satellite
radio repair shop in Detroit at Willow
Run Airport near Ypsilanti, Michigan,
and about that time, I got the bid. This
brought us within 200 miles from home.
We worked on the Collins 51R-3, 17-L4
and L6, along with the Bendix RDR-1D.
The system of pulling radios from service after four months of service was
maintained by having a date stamp on
each radio in a little holder on the front
of the units. During periodic inspections,
the dates were checked and fresh units
were installed with the outdated ones
brought to the shop for recertification.
I developed a system for repairing the
black boxes that would ensure long
service. They were all 28-volt units. So
when I serviced them, I would lower the
input voltage to 23 volts and proceed
through any repairs and certification.
This would make any vacuum tubes that
were weak immediately show. I wanted
to see if my procedure was better than
the home shop in Washington, D.C., so
I used green ink on the date stamp that
was attached to any boxes done in the
Ypsilanti shop. The boxes that came in
for being out of date were almost all the
ones with green ink. My boxes stayed
out without failures, and the ones that
came in for repair were mostly the ones
with black ink.
We needed 114 volts 400 cps for the
radar bench, so I mounted an aircraft inverter in the mechanics repair area so
they could deal with the noise. Just so
none of them would fool with it, I posted a large sign in red letters that read,
"Danger - 10,000 Ohms." The next
day, the union steward said I must put a
fence around the thing if it was dangerous. I got a little chuckle from that.
A friend who was a ground-station
radio repairman for Capital decided to
leave the airline and go to work for a repair station on the airport. He invited me
to join him, and I did.
Thus, my introduction to general aviation began. q

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april

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75
3/10/15 11:20 AM
http://www.cobham.com/prescott
Avionics News April 2015

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