How did you get started in Engineering?
 

Just curious...

Hi Gengis,

Sorry, I had to vote "other" as there's no "all of the above" option.

I've always found Lego and Meccano great to work with but they both have different strengths.

Nowadays I can put things back together again too, much to my employers relief.

dd

But I always have that 1 washer leftover damn :O

Mechano helped a bit, but having a brother in aviation and doing a stint in the ATC (Air Cadets)opened a few doors.

My work with the Bako Building kit developed an interest in building and civil engineering but the Meccano moved me towards mechanical engineering. Finally, a visit to the RAF BoB week display at Thornaby Aerodrome included sitting in a Meteor cockpit for a souvenir photograph and I knew I wanted to dismantle the instrument panel and find out what was behind it.

Avionics it is then...

...although I learned my basics by keeping my bicycle on the road, while turning it into a 'Tracker' (long before Mountain Bikes) and fine tuning the gearbox. ;)

Fixing a neighbours lawnmower.

He said why not be a mechanic, on something more complicated, and pointed to a DC9 on climb in the distance.

17years old.

I disassembled some cars at Vauxhall when I did work experience confirmed to me that I wanted to fix things... Mixed in my passion for aviation and voila!


Aviation Engineer

Voted Taking everything to Bits, but would have voted all the above if it had been there.

Spent my Childhood playing with Meccano, Lego, Airfix Kits and taking my first Radio to bits then putting it back Together had bits left over but it worked fine (Still the same Nowadays)

I did try to modify the poll to add an "all of the above", after Digidave's first post, but I'm afraid that not being a moderator of this forum, I couldn't.

I'm a lego man myself, but confess to a lot of taking things to bits (and seem to remember strenuous attempts at the age of 5 to build an aeroplane in the garage out of my little brother's redundant cot which G.Sr (an ex-supermarine designer, so he probably encouraged me, although I don't remember it) had disassembled and stored as firewood.

Mechano, nope, never got the hang of it - I always enjoyed the relative immediacy of Lego.

G

I assume you mean aeronautical engineer as opposed to maintenance engineer?

Being given a Meccano kit and banging it together to make alsorts of things, my son dosn't seem to have the same interest as I had then. Dad giving me an old car that had failed the mot and tinkering around with that
Living close to Northolt, and the school playground over-looking the end of the of the runway, during the breaks as couldn't be bothered to kick the younger kids around as it stopped being fun, several of us took to plane spotting. With the occasional bicycle ride to Heathrow to stand at the intersection of 27R and 23.
Then came the time to leave school and several of the others went for job interviews with BEA and BOAC which sounded interesting, Yes in the dim and distant past, (stop yawning at the back there). The end result is that I was the only one who got the apprenticeship with BEA or BOAC, now, known to all as BA plc. Many of the others went on to work for the GPO, now known to all as British Telecom.

Damm. and I thought leggo's refered to womans breasts.(both made for kids but dad likes to play with them)

Does it matter?

G

Never got on with Mecano, I too prefered Lego. My dad was in the industry to, so it was inevitable . My head prevented me becoming a pilot (i.e it was too far from the ground, I could'nt see out of it too well and it was empty!!!). But I always wanted to work around aircraft. Dad did try to put me off, he eaven tried to make me an ELECTRICIAN!!!!. But I found my own leval amongst the grease guns and stuck toilet dump valves!. I have been doing it for twenty five years and I think I'll stick at it, mind you if I won the lottery I'd be gone in a shot!.
Rgds Dr I.

Fruitloop......like your thinking!!
All started off playing with lego....... being born in Yeovil and spending my "sprog" years watching the choppers at Yeovilton might have had something to do with it.
Funny thing,thirty years later I worked on the B200 belonging to Lego..............
The wheel sure does turn.:ok:

Lego, Meccano, Model Railways, all seemed to contribute in a delight to take things to bits and rebuild them again.
I have to thank a (now deceased) art teacher/careers advisor for getting me into this job. Thanks again Bob Westall at SJD.:ok:

Does it matter?

Well...in the grand scheme of things, no. However, using the leggo set analogy, the role of the aircraft maintenance engineer is to restore the leggos back the way the aeronautical engineer had them assembled...

That explains a great deal. There's a particular aeroplane that I work on, for which no model was available. So I made one out of Lego, which proudly sits on the windowsill in my office. Except that about weekly it changes shape subtly, as the cleaner knocks it off, breaks it, then rebuilds it slightly differently.

G

You mean you have a retired Technical Services Engineer (Structures) as a cleaner Genghis? Awesome!

Any chance of a cleaning job for an old Avionics bender when I retire? :D

Told my school careers advisor I wanted to become a professional musician. So here I am 29 years later maintaing aeroplanes....figure that out.