Joining the RF

[FlyNavy]

RNZAF museum photo of "First RNZAF female Armourer Tracy McLauchlan loading practice bombs on an A-4K" No.75 Sqdn 1987 (photo title):

[phil]

Tracy is still around, working at pubs at Ohakea last time I checked.

Aero Enge is Basic Enge, they just changed the name a few years ago.

[Dave Homewood]

Ah right, thanks Phil.

[dpdouglas]

Indeed Aero Eng is the new name for basic engineering and instead of making a vice we are making a G clamp and a variety of other things such as the soft faced hammer and the step block. Also nowadays we disassemble and reassemble a lawn mower engine for Tools.

[Dave Homewood]

We also made the soft faced hammer, I wonder what happened to mine. Hmmm. And we made a tool box which serves as my model paint box.

Lawn mower engines? Training for doing foreigners or is the RNZAF planning to get microlights?

[phil]

They ditched the tool box some years ago now, I've still got mine too. The hammer has remained as they still do machining for the screw on the G clamp.

When you get posted to Ohakea you can come round and sort out my lawn mower for me!

[lumpy]

When I did my motorcycle engineering aprenticeship over 20years ago , we also used mower engines . Dont scoff , they have a lot of design features that are common to many engines ( eg , the main bearings are offset to the centre of the bore , the gudgeon is also offset to the centre of the piston , stuff you cant see , but have to measure to find ) , and , lastly it was a great race to get your engine stripped , measured and running again ( and you couldnt cheat since the tutor knew what the readings for each individual engine were ) . Good lesons for a first year apprentice

[dpdouglas]

We didnt so much as measure faces and what not for screws although I think it would have been better if we did. As stated by a few of the current instructors, " The step block is a waste of time , the students wont learn anything but how to file and they will lose interest quick as there is no use for a step block except as a big paper weight". Also with the avg course being 3 or 4 flights large it makes for an exceptionally chocka blocked programme. How many periods did you have for the jaw retainer for the machine vice?

[Dave Homewood]

When I went through there, when it was 4TTS in the good old days, we had from memory four or maybe five Flights off my recruit course (two were Flights of CT's) plus one or two Flights off my course were sent to Wigram too because 4TTS was full and they did the unusual thing of doing Basic Engineering down there. As well as us there were at least four Flights from the previous recruit course also completing their Basic Engineering, plus a load of Mechs and Techs. The crew room used to be like Grand Central Station at smoko time. I doubt it's like that nowadays. There were 120 people on my recruit course and most were technical personnel, and the about the same numbers went for the course before and after us too.

[phil]

We had three flights on my basic enge, plus at least four flights on the course ahead of us (they had had a really big intake of 120 on their recruit course so their basic enge was big too) - they overlapped by half a course I think, so at any one time you had a 'junior' course and the 'senior' course, which really was rubbish, but it seemed like a big deal at the time. After 8 weeks or so you became the senior course and another course started behind you, something like that anyway.

Was the jaw retainer that little peice that secured the screw into the back of the sliding jaw? Or was it the flat piece that sat under the sliding jaw? I honestly can't recall, I know the little piece was just a progress piece. I remember being told the whole vice took 96 or 98 periods, it's all a bit of a blur 12 years down the track.

[Dave Homewood]

All I know is I used my vice for opening some macadamias tonight.

[dpdouglas]

Yea at the moment we are doing the soft faced hammer in the machine shop with F/S Wilson. It's mint as. The Jaw retainer is the bit that clamps onto the work.