Recent comments in /f/IAmA

jeanwolf t1_j2wkszd wrote

Reply to comment by Mikeyme1998 in IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

Thank you for doing this AMA! What is your opinion on the A220 other than that? Based on what you heard in general in the industry and on the fact that it is a relatively new aircraft and it's reliability remains to be proven?

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hebrewchucknorris t1_j2w9srp wrote

Reply to IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

Is the pay at Canadian AMOs still as bad as when I left 4 years ago? My old gig capped out AME-Es at ~70k unless you were a lead hand.

I tour overseas and literally doubled my salary, and I only work half the year.

I'd like to be at home every day, but 70k in a HCOL city just doesn't cut it.

You are knowledgeable, and well spoken, have you thought about overseas work? Have you ever done line maintenance?

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Raider440 t1_j2w94z6 wrote

Reply to IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

Recently with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine there has been a flood of pictures of pilots from both sides(mainly Russian Strike Aircraft) using civilian GARMIN GPS units instead of their onboard instruments for navigation and strike missions. Do you have an idea why?

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Poncho_au t1_j2vvayf wrote

Reply to comment by Mikeyme1998 in IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

5G (in cellular communications) definitely doesn’t stand for “5 gigahertz” it stands for “5th generation”. I’m pretty sure 5G doesn’t even use any frequency in the 5 gigahertz range globally.

Source re the frequency usage: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands

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Poncho_au t1_j2vtorn wrote

Reply to comment by twojs1b in IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

Aren’t most airlines globally now allowing Bluetooth and WiFi inflight? They are in Australia.
I think the historic reasons for technology off inflight was a near entirely unfounded fear of interference.
The reasons for putting certain devices away during takeoff and landing is the risk of flying objects.
The reason airplane mode is still mandated on flights to my understanding is because of the likelihood that people will start taking calls and being even more annoying during flights.

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Mikeyme1998 OP t1_j2vi7h5 wrote

Reply to comment by stingrayerr in IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

I'll be honest and say the news coverage from other parts of the world hasn't grabbed my attention. I know for certain that Canada and the FAA in the States are mandating limitations and safety margins for these technologies, and I've heard EASA in Europe is also aware of the concerns, but I'm most informed on my own regulations and I don't know the extent to which other countries are handing it.

Keep in mind that aviation in developed countries strives for absolute safety and huge margins of error to make air travel as safe as possible. This system, of course, is not perfect... But when I say things like "cause for concern" in my replies, I am very much not saying these technologies ARE volatile and ARE going to cause crashes. The closest thing I can say for certain is we don't know, and when we don't know, it's best to assume the worst and take steps to get as close to certain safety as we possibly can in order to avoid the unknown.

Many countries do not operate in this manner, as we've all sadly seen on the news with occasional aviation accidents that could arguably be avoided. Knowing this, the 5G mandates that we put in place in my country could be very different from what other countries may or may not do. And the outcome of that is, unfortunately, only going to show itself in time.

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Mikeyme1998 OP t1_j2vb8kk wrote

Reply to comment by Tie-Down in IAMA Canadian Avionics Technician, specializing in line maintenance and Garmin flight deck installations on a number of different airframes. Please, ask me anything! by Mikeyme1998

Hey there! Thanks for the question and for getting our next generation up in the air safely!

I've worked for a large airline pre-covid as well as the smaller shop that I'm with now, and I've noticed that most of the really neat stuff is concentrated towards the big jets, rather than smaller aircraft like the stuff I work with now. With the stuff I have now, it has a definitive identity and it mostly works to chase the changes in policy like ADS-B and diversity transponder (basically turning the transponder from air to ground to air based, to more air to air/space based... think communication to space based satellites rather than a ground station... this gets complicated due to the differences in US vs Canadian transponder infastructure). There are a lot of cool little hidden features in the small planes, like units that can autotune to a frequency based on GPS position (it knows ground is 121.8, so you can just 'tune ground' rather than dial in the frequency), or integrated airport charts that you can pull up on your screens which completely negate the need for an EFB with charts. I also really like synthetic vision and going in that direction for IFR flying.

But the REALLY cool stuff is on the big jets.

The Airbus A220 was just coming into our fleet as I was leaving, and I was privileged evough to run a bit of maintenance on it. The thing that blew me away is that this airliner had like, 10 buttons. The rest was all automatic or virtually controlled. It was like the inside of a really really nice car, instead of the spaceship esque interior were used to seeing. And on top of that, it had about 6 physical circuit breakers, with all the rest being virtual. You could go into your maintenance menu, select the type of maintenance you were doing, and the plane would just pull its own CBs. It was wild.

But the coolest part was the onboard communication integration.

During flight, it would send any snags that it sensed to an iPad that a maintenance personel had inside a van. That maintenance engineer could see the problem, and poke around the aircraft computers for info DURING FLIGHT from the ground. The plane would then talk to a database and tell the maintainer what parts it needed, give you the maintenance reference, tell you affected systems, etc... all while the plane was happily flying to you. I have never felt so obsolete in my life, but it was DAMN cool.

EDIT: Ok, the cockpit definitely has more than 10 buttons... The image I had in my mind was a bit different from reality! In general though, the layout and general complexity of the cockpit was vastly improved compared to what I usually saw in the A320 or 757/767/777.

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