PLANE TALK
He was then hired by R.J. (Bob) Ducey at Ducey radio located next to Eldorado Mines hangar at the municipal airport. Wardair sent a lot of radios and equipment to Ducey for repair. Earl worked on DC4’s, Cansos, Beavers, Twin Otters, and other typical aircraft of that time. They maintained Narco, King, Bendix and many other brands familiar to the nineteen fifties and sixties. They did not work on any accessories. He recalls a lot of work installing and tuning HF systems. His background as a licensed radio amateur gave him an advantage in tuning up such radios. HF radio communications was very important for aviation in the North, especially in the Arctic. He fondly remembers walking though water in the belly of a Canso (Canadian version of the Catalina), to work while airborne, on a trailing HF antenna. Earl later saw the future was bright in telecommunications and moved on to the Alberta government telephones systems now known as Telus, a private corporation. Earl saw the beginning of the avionics world as we now know it.
The major airlines had extensive in-house shops and were able to do in house repairs on most of their own equipment, although much was still sent out to outside shops. Around this time, the early nineteen seventies, the term avionics was expanding to include anything using electricity on the aircraft. So, I was soon troubleshooting and repairing pretty much all the ATA code chapters systems. The so-called black boxes were all being sent out to independent shops and or the original equipment manufacturers. Unfortunately, the AME Licensed aircraft categories electronics training did not advance as fast as avionics systems did. This led to the AME Category E licence in Canada. The Royal Commission by Justice Dubin recommended that we,
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Transport Canada, add avionics as a category to the AME Licence. The implementation of this fell to me as the Chief, Manufacturing and Maintenance for Transport Canada. I was based in the Transport Headquarters in Ottawa. It took over two years of intense consultations of which the AEA was major player. I had worked with many great classical AMEs and held strongly to the opinion the real solution was to increase the avionics education of on-aircraft technicians and AMEs. I was not convinced that we needed to take away any privileges from the on- aircraft AMEs but create a new category — avionics. There was one licence we had to change — it was known then as the AME B Licence. It was a structures licence but had taken over certifying avionics mods because many mods required airframe work. I also foresaw a major increase in avionics training for technicians and AMEs. That would have meant the Category “E” for avionics would one day disappear as an on-aircraft licence. That has never happened, and I don’t foresee that anymore. The addition of a new category was a major undertaking as it involved sorting out the relationships with existing categories, building curriculums and getting colleges approved to the new standards. Eventually it was implemented and still exists today. A lot of hard work was accomplished by the AEA members of that time. The two biggest decisions I recall were not removing privileges for the existing AME license and requiring all aircraft certification to be based on an AME license. These are still in effect today, basically worldwide. Flashing back to 1975, the first
job I was assigned to in Transport Canada was to be a member of the avionics shop inspection section in our Ontario Region Toronto office. This meant I would be approving, inspecting and auditing all the
avionics shops in the Ontario region. There were many in those days, some were imbedded in airline maintenance facilities and many were standalone shops. These ranged form one person shops in small towns to shops with a staff of over one hundred people. That is how I first met up with Jack Grose, Navsari, Toronto who was also the leader of the AEA in Canada. It was soon apparent to me that across Canada and in the United Sates the AEA was the voice of airborne electronics, avionics in North America. My first technical change in my new career was to work with the FAA on the ELT battery reliability issues. Lithium batteries were overheating and causing problems. Sound familiar? I also became involved in avionics ELT engineering issues, as a manufacturing inspector, monitoring the manufacturer who was developing deployable ELTs. The idea was they would fly off the aircraft in a crash and so survive to transmit location of the crash. The AEA was involved in many joint consultation projects with both TC and the FAA. They had already been holding large international conferences to which I was soon deployed. They were extraordinary opportunities to see the latest avionics and meet all the industry key personnel. This was to become invaluable for me when I was tasked with implementing an avionics licence.
The heavier avionics equipment
used by the airlines usually went back to their manufacturers for repair and overhaul. The smaller air carriers sent their avionics to some of the lager shops in AEA. Most general aviation avionics went to local shops. I am speaking of VHF radio, ADF systems, VOR/ILS receivers and so on. This changed over the last 40 years when so much avionics has become plug and play systems which do not lend
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