Manuals

[redtail]

Aeroguru , in another thread, brought up the subject about manuals. I thought it would make for an active topic.

I agree with him, DC-10 (and other Douglas products) Lamm manuals are a beautiful thing. Easy to read schematics of interrelated systems. Boeing comes close, as does Airbus with their schematics, but Douglas really like to portray the whole shooting match.

So, what manuals do you like or hate. Who does it well? Like it on paper, film or computer.

[Mice]

Could not care less about the form manuals come in (CD, Film, hard copy) as long as the equipment is available to read them in good quality.
I do care that the appropriate information is easily obtained though. Sometimes you think these schematics were done by someone fresh out of University, who would not know the front from back of an aircraft.

Now, those Airbus wiring diagrams............what a pain to read!!

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When all else fails, read the manual!

[redtail]

Paper manuals seem to be the fastest way for me to find something when I don’t know exactly where or what it is. Ever try to thumb through a CD? Unfortunately, there are some Neanderthals around that like to rip out the pages they need….. Also, at my place of employment, if you get dinged up and have to go on light duty, you get to make manual revisions. It is an incentive to work safely and stay healthy.

Ever find out that the manual procedure will never, ever work the way it is written?

No parle vois Airbus. They seem to go out of their way to do everything opposite of all known conventions. Makes you wonder if they actually have secret wiring diagrams that only the manufacturer uses. To be fair, they make sense once you get used to them, but why re-invent the wheel?

[jetmech757]

The Boeing wiring diagrams are an absolute joy, especially on the later model A/C. Using equipment designators from the wire prints to get part numbers has saved me many hours of searching through the IPC's. Then you have the wire lists, ground lists, splice lists, connector lists, and all the other good to know stuff in chapter 91. It seems Boeing goes out of their way to make the lives of R&E types easier, and I appreciate that. A luxury I didn't have when working on Lockheed products in the Military!

[oh_ring]

LAMMS are great!

[The hippy]

lamms agreed are tops.

[redtail]

Late model Boeing equipement lists are nice. Connectors have the Ch. 20 reference for tooling, parts and instructions for assembling the connector. Look in the right hand columns, near the WDG reference.

[TwoDeadDogs]

Hi,Redtail
The French definitely do their own thing when it comes to aircraft manuals,just like their cars.Citroens and Renaults have just enough good points to make them worthwhile cars,especially to drive,and enough mechanical quirks to make you tear your hair out.The aero companies seem to print their manuals in a breed of English that boggles the mind(smaller,older stuff).They seem to be very reluctant,at all,to publish them in English.Do their manuals conform to ATA? I remember the Dauphin manuals come with paired A5 pages,instead of good old A4.
Fokker manuals are good.146 books not as good.
Updating manuals is definitely a corner of hell.
Regards
TDD

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Drink,gurls,****,arse...

[JET SET SPARKY]

Remember the nearly extinct short-medium haul noise-maker the BAC 1-11? best diagrams and manuals i had to work with,especially wiring manuals.....others worked;
1)boeing....fine
2)airbus....awkward
3)DHC ......more luck asking your missus for info!
4)bombardier....ditto
5) BAe (later models)..fine

i prefer paper manuals to 'fiche-readers' anyday, cd-roms work fine with cd-changer towers...but a pain if you have to print off sections of AMM etc.when you are A.O.G. or at an outstation...i'd rather have the 'book' close at hand anyday all told
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kick the tyres-light the fires

[sprocket]

J.S.Sparky....our facility is looking to update its fiche reader/printers. I have been pushing for changing to cd's,but the decision makers reckon that engineers dirty fingers will be too harsh on disks and computer keyboards.Is this the case? or do the cd changer towers alleviate that fear?

http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/confused.gif

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Its a big thing...when you look into it !

[This message has been edited by sprocket (edited 03 June 2000).]

[spannersatcx]

Sprocket - cd's are normally kept in a tower of 7 cd drives or so, so you'd never need to touch them except when updating them. They have a search facility so you just type in a few words and it will take you there. As for keyboards we still have th original on our pc that we've had for about 3 years now, so shouldn't be a problem there. Mind you if you pour skdrol on it it won't last, any way they are pretty cheap to replace these days. Apart from supplements we don't have hundreds of hard copy manuals clogging up the office. Still have microfilm for the classics though.

[JET SET SPARKY]

sprocket......just tell the descision makers that working with cd's will reduce defect rectification times...maybe that will drag them into the new millenium?
I used to stuggle for ages with fiche machines trying to a)get the reader serviceable in the first place(bulbs/printer etc) b)get the reel to 'auto-feed' or c) stop myself from being sick from watching countless pages flash before my eyes....not good.
A good p.c./printer combination and a CD tower will beat any reader/printer any day.
speed of operation the main plus point.
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kick the tyres light the fires!

[JET SET SPARKY]

p.s....as for your question.....cd's have proved very durable and computer hardware likewise(i haven't heard of any breakages/failures due to dirty enviroment.)
Must be a lot of bean-counters stressing over initial outlay for the units???

[jetmech757]

The CD's are nice, but with it you need a fast enough computer and enough hard drive space to keep all the CD's loaded in memory. Or you can deal with Skydrol and 2380 stained, therefore useless, CD's. And that's worse than any micro-fisce type reader any day. But the beancounters (like ours) don't get that, so we have to change CD's manually.

[sprocket]

That was the info I was hoping for guys,it will give me a bit more ammo for "the cause".

I suspect that the CD option is the cheapest way to go nowadays,as there are PCs everywhere. Not like fiche readers, which if you can find one, may not work properly

The hardcopy manuals,I agree are the easiest to read, but when travelling to outposts with them makes for a lot of excess baggage

J.S.Sparky..interesting point about the fiche reader making you feel sick,...thought I was the only sufferer.
http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/cool.gif

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Its a big thing...when you look into it !

[dqcolony]

I've recently had the joy of the Boeing 717 manuals on-line (company intranet)or local CD rom in a server with hyperlinks between other section references and figures. On a 19" or bigger monitor with split screens it's awesome!
but...
the older I get, the better I like smaller planes, closer to the ground, with fewer motors & brakes... and revising manuals!

[Blacksheep]

Give me a good CD any time! Especially when they are re-drafted to take proper advantage of web-browsing techniques. The best I've seen are the Pratt and Whitney PW4000 IPCs

I'm an administrator nowadays instead of a REAL engineer and one lunch time a desperate Line Engineer called up our office for advice on an alternative part number for an engine part. Since the Power Plant engineer was out, I bunged the CD in the drive, went to the search page, and typed in the name of the part. The CD took me straight to the right page and even gave a hyper-link to the illustration, with the correct part highlighted. Pretty neat if even an ex-Avionics guy can use it! What a pity the Line didn't have a copy of the CD. [They have now! :) ]

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Through difficulties to the cinema

[china_trident]

Hi jetmech757

Just for the record most Vendor's CD's are protected so they cannot be copied directly too the hard drive. The main reason for this is, that you the user cannot update a CD when you need to add revisions etc, that are sent out from the manufacturer, like you can with revisions to manuals. So equipment manufacturers and vendors to the aviation world find it easier to update the CD, and ship out a new CD complete with revision etc, then you just bin the old one.

That's how we do it ....... http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/cool.gif

[Mice]

Gentlemen,
Let us not forget how good the old Fokker F27 manuals were eh!
As for the CD Jetmech 757, if you have a problem with 2380 or whatever damaging the CD's, what do you think is happening to the other parts of the computer if your hands are that dirty?
CD's are easily updatable (electronically) by the manufacturer, and cost approx $1.00 per CD. Also the savings in postage over the old paper manuals must be enormous.
The only pity is that the older a/c manuals were not electronically produced originally, thus are still in that crappy film format, or paper. Most manufacturers will not update these into CD's due to the cost. Pity!

As for the Airbus manual system. Airbus produces most sections of the manual in French originally. (the stuff from England being the main difference). These are then translated into english, thus the difficulty with descriptive technical verse. French is not a technical language. Those of you familiar with the Airbus manuals can actually pick the different authoring between ATA chapters. It is that apparent. They are improving a little though.

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When all else fails, read the manual!

[CONES R US]

F 27 manuals were OK
146 CD ROM is good when used in conjunction with the (hard copy) schematic diagram book.
I have seen CD wiring diagrams for a SAAB and that looks horrible - much prefer paper copies. You can photocopy the page required and mark it up as you wish.

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NO FAULT FOUND

[Mice]

Believe Qantas (the real one, International) in Australia were investigating a server in head office (Sydney) that was connected to Boeing directly, and all info comes direct from Mr Boeing, updated to the 'Nth' degree naturally. This would be LAN'd to all ports.

Any other manufacturer going this route?

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When all else fails, read the manual!

[redtail]

Our manuals have been put on an “intranet”, a LAN from the mainbase. Unfortunately, what happened is that some beancounter ok’d the idea to scan the old manuals onto the computer, so no text searches or other modern niceties of the computer age, since all of the pages are images. Some pages are in the wrong chapters, and some pages did not get scanned or indexed. Also no backing up from hyperlinks, one has to start the search over again. What has been fun is that our old tapes were taken away to be replaced by the computers, but not all of the manuals have made their way into the computer yet. With no tapes around, if the system fails, no manuals to work with. A real "brother-in-law" project all around.
On a positive note, when the system is correctly setup to a printer, you can print out full size wiring diagrams to color, take notes on, etc.

The longer I am in this field, the more I have to agree with an older mechanic that management’s job is to place obstacles in our path of performing our jobs.