Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/113663
I f I C a n D o T hi s So, when it's time to teach someone like me about something new, the first rule is to start simple. Establish some common ground or an anchor, if you prefer, by opening with the basics, even if it's something you're pretty sure I already know. If you want to teach me how to rivet, for example, start by making sure that I know how rivets work. Take two minutes to explain how they pass through holes in two pieces of metal and then are compressed and flattened. Pulling a pop rivet by hand and watching the "other" side of it is a great way to do this. There will be time to explain things like the intricacies of AN hardware numbering soon enough, but be sure you start with at least a quick look at the basics. If I start from a comfortable position, I'm off and running and ready to learn. If I'm lost a moment after you open your mouth, it's not going to go well. To be terribly blunt, I'd rather be treated like an idiot (briefly and within reason) than made to feel like one. Tell Me Why I'm not necessarily proud to admit that, on our Zenith project, I've often let someone else read the plans and then point me at a series of holes to be drilled or rivets to be pulled, and then I've just run on autopilot from there. Given the number of repetitive tasks on a build like this, that's not immediately a bad thing, but if you were to interrupt me and ask me about what the next step in the instructions were, what part I'd be working on next, or even why this particular step was necessary, I might not know the answer. If I didn't, it would be because I lacked context. While this can be okay at times, especially in a team build like ours, it would be a recipe for failure if I were building on my own. If I let myself spend too much time in that sort of "passive automation" mode, it would be all too easy to make mistakes—drilling one too many holes, putting a rivet where I was supposed to just put a cleco—because, in effect, my brain has been turned off. Government Advocacy Specialist Jonathan Harger (with Jim Casper and Jerry Paveglio) inserts a cleco. 48 Vol.2 No.3 / March 201 3 When I was in high school, I had a precalculus teacher named Mr. Tubbs. Looking back more than 25 years later, I'm not even sure what calculus actually is, but there is one lesson he taught that I'll never forget. Whenever someone would get impatient with the time we spent on theory and wanted to just start working on the math problems, he'd adopt this high, whiny voice and say mockingly, "Oh, show me number one, Mr. Tubbs. I can do the rest!" The first few times I heard this, my responses were "Man, that's irritating!" and "Yes, exactly!" But over time I started to get what he meant. If I only learned how to solve one specific type of problem with no understanding of the theory behind it, then while I could certainly complete