Hit 25 years as an avionics tech this week and it hit me different

Honestly, I was just looking at my logbook trying to find a record from a 2002 install and I realized I've been turning wrenches on planes for a quarter century. That number caught me off guard. I started back in '99 working on old King Airs with steam gauges and now I'm troubleshooting displays that talk to satellites. The biggest change I've seen is all the wiring. Used to be you could trace a circuit in ten minutes, now you need a laptop just to find a ground fault on the new composite birds. I still remember my first boss telling me to check for chafing on a bundle behind the panel, and that same basic rule still saves my butt today. Has anyone else had that moment where you just stop and realize how long you've been doing this?

2 comments

2 Comments

morganj811mo ago

That's wild how the basics never really change no matter how fancy the tech gets.

patb861mo ago

Yeah but even the basics shift a little. Like people keep saying "walk before you run" but try telling that to someone learning to code in 2024 where you can just copy paste whole functions from ChatGPT.