Avionics News August 2021 - 36

series
BY THOMAS INMAN
Expectations
A
ugust is here, and many colleges and
trade schools will be starting up before the
end of the month. To be prepared for this
experience, you should be aware of what you can expect
as a student and what the school or college expects
of you.
Let's start with what you can expect from the college
or school. Your educational institution will be invested
in your success. You can expect to have the equipment,
infrastructure and staff necessary to learn your trade. For
avionics, this means the institution should have aircraft
equipment and test equipment. Preferably, the school has
an airframe, but strictly speaking, an airframe is not an
absolute requirement to teach avionics.
When it comes to investment in your success, a
quality institution will be regionally accredited. Earning
regional accreditation is not easy because the accrediting
agencies have extremely high standards.
For avionics, the school should properly prepare
students to pass the Aircraft Electronics Technician
certification exam provided by ASTM's National
Center for Aerospace & Transportation Technologies.
SpaceTEC Partners Inc. is the administrator for all
ASTM NCATT written exams through Credential
Testing Services. SPI also processes applications from
schools and industry training providers for ASTM
NCATT training provider approval. This approval shows
the institution has the minimum equipment, faculty and
curriculum in place to teach avionics.
Many years ago, a group of professors visited an
avionics program in a large city. Two days passed, and
36 avionics news * august 2021
they never saw any avionics equipment. Finally, after
pressing the institution's representatives, the visitors
were guided to a storage area where a few avionics test
boxes were gathering dust. Some of the professors from
the visit participated in the formation of NCATT, with
the hope of preventing a program from describing itself
falsely as an avionics program.
For teaching and learning avionics, equipment is a
must. Keep in mind, it does not need to be the newest
equipment in the market. In fact, some of the older
nav/comms make better teaching aids than the newest
versions, primarily due to the documentation available.
These days, many avionics manufacturers hold tightly
to the documentation for their equipment since they
perform component level repairs at the factory. With
an older unit, you can virtually see how it works with
schematics and detailed circuit descriptions.
The same thing applies to airframes. Aircraft have
an incredibly long life span. Basic designs of the most
popular airplanes haven't changed in 80 years. Most
have a single wing with rather limited variations of
the empennage. Most have three wheels, two sets
of controls, and space in the panel for instruments
and radios. The big changes are in things not readily
apparent. The newest aircraft make much more use of
composite materials in their construction. Of course, the
avionics have changed drastically.
At my institution (Pennsylvania College of
Technology), two of the 17 aircraft in the fleet were
constructed the same year, 1965. The Boeing flight
deck looks much as it did when built, but if one looks
Avionics News August 2021

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