Fav PMEL Section Poll

[Velasco]

Here it is, your chance to vote for favorite section of PMEL to work in! Maybe your wish will come true!

[Hoopty]

I'm one of those K8 "vegetables"...

[Freezer]

What?  No QA?  That's the best, you get to work every section!   

[Rocket]

I loved K6. I agree with Freezer that QA gets to see it all, which is nice, but I hated doing the RCA, especially if the RC is a poor technician. QA serves a great purpose, especially in a PMEL, but not the most popular person in the lab!

[docbyers]

When I worked QA at Ramstein under Linda Villines, we tried to take a "humanistic" approach to the job.  So when you carted a piece of gear back to the lab, and the tech looked nervous, you gave them a "Look, it's no big deal.  I've been where you are lots of times.  I'm not here to burn you or question your skill or integrity.  I shook the coins, and your turn came up, and I'm just doing my job.  If you did yours like you're supposed to, we won't have any problems."  99% of the time life was good.  Almost every time I had a QVI failure it was due to an equipment problem, not usually the technician's fault.  I enjoyed QA because we were taught to act more as trainers, mentors, experts to go to when you had a problem or question.  We weren't treated like the "PMEL Police," and didn't act like it, either...  AGMC Audit teams and IG inspectors filled that role just fine...  We were there to make sure a tech did their job correctly, and if they didn't, to train, coach, or instruct them in the proper way to do it, so they didn't repeat the mistakes, or endanger themselves, the equipment, or the mission.  I enjoyed the technical challenges of K8, but really enjoyed the variety of QA.  Plus, I had a great boss, and that made a lot of difference.

[OlDave]

Straight out of tech school at my first base, RAF Upper Heyford, UK, I was asked on about my 3rd day there if I wanted to work on a 205. Being young, dumb and full of...oh well you know the rest, I said sure. Expecting to be sent to the K3 section of the lab to practice my skills on a HP 205AG which we learned in tech school. But no, I get taken back into the dungeon called K6 and presented with a big, heavy, yellow, noisy monster called a TTU205CE. Well I survived it and it survived me and I got to really like it back there where you weren't bothered much because "you had to be crazy to work in that little room with all that noise".

Long story short, I ended up working in either K5/6 or QA for an entire 25 year career. I've worked on just about everything that came through there from TTU205Bs, yes boys and girls, they had a 205B all the way up to field testing the prototype 3682 for AGMC. And my friends, it may be big and ugly and well past it's prime now. But let me tell you, it CAN be wonderfully accurate if calibrated correctly. I used to say I didn't calibrate IT, it calibrated me. It could detect even the slightest bit of drag on the CEC piston before you even knew it was there. Oh that's right, most of you kids don't remember the CEC. It predated the 2465. And imagine how much fun it would be to calibrate the 3682 with just the low range and the high range pistons of the 2465. Right again, the first units the AF bought of the 2465 didn't include the medium range piston. But back to the 3682, it was like a quantum leap forward from its predecessor, the Ruska 6680.1. Find a really old timer and ask him how much fun it was to adjust all those little screws in the altitude and airspeed modules using the old "dot 1".

[Thraxas]

I would have to say k3-k4, and that's only because it includes fiber optics.
I dislike working on microwave eqipment.

[Thraxas]

Let's not fool ourselves. Everybody knows K6 is full of glorified grease monkeys.

[dallanta]

I prefer k6 myself, but for change sometimes working back and forth in k3/k4.  Grease monkey, lol yeah I sure have wrecked a lot of good shirts.

[Gatdula]

I'm one of those K8 "vegetables"...

Your in good company, it takes a special person to chart a resistor.  That and no one bothers you.