• Not carrying my own weight.
• Staying in a job for too many years when I should have probably retired.
• Feeling sorry for myself. When you start feeling guilty, you start feeling guilty for everything.
From somewhere inside of me, I heard a faint voice that quickly got louder saying, “Waaa! Suck it up — you’ve got work to do. Now go do it!” I quit worrying about what was going on around me and pulled the cowlings off and started troubleshooting the problem. I had an oil leak so the obvious fi rst step is fi nding where the leak was coming from. Having found most of the oil was centered around the starter/generator pad, I determined that we either had a starter/generator drive o-ring leaking or an accessory gearbox mag-seal leaking. Removing the starter/generator determined that the o-ring looked ok, so I ended up replacing the mag-seal. Finding the procedures and the correct parts took me a couple of hours, but when I got to tearing it down it went pretty quickly. I have replaced mag seals before. By morning, I was sitting at my desk doing paperwork when the day crew came in. I was out of service all night and I still needing to do a ground run for a leak check. The other mechanics took the aircraft outside and got the pilot to ground run it. Leak fi xed. Aircraft back in service and business as usual. I was tired but I wasn’t feeling guilty anymore. The job probably took me three times longer than it should have, but what can I say? I didn’t have the experience on that type of helicopter. Now I do! I had to fall back on my experience and my mechanical skills. That is what the new company hired me to do. I’ll learn all of its specifi c procedures over time but the basic requirements of its operations are no diff erent than any of the other operators that I have worked for.
The moral of this long story is that it’s ok to feel guilty sometimes. It shows that you are dedicated and care — but don’t let it consume you. Remember that the defi nition of guilt refers to an “imaginary” feeling of deserving blame,
See us at Heli-Expo 2020 | Booth 5733 February | March 2020
HelicopterMaintenanceMagazine.com 35
especially for an “imagined” off ense or from a sense of inadequacy. You always need to keep learning and honing your mechanical skills, but always remember that the company you work for knows your skills and your limitations and if they thought you were inadequate, you would be replaced. Things have settled down at our program since those
fi rst days, and our routine has become — well, routine. I’m feeling pretty good about myself again and I think I’ll work a couple more years before thinking about retirement.
Terry L. Peed has been working in the aviation industry for more than 49 years. He is a Vietnam era Navy veteran and is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with an Associate of Science degree in Aviation Maintenance. Peed
holds an Airframe & Power plant certifi cate with Inspection Authorization. He is employed by Metro Aviation Inc. as a fi eld base mechanic at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. Email
terrypeed@yahoo.com.
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