When I was 19 ( in 1978), I became fascinated with electronics. My Uncle was an Air Force electronics technician and worked on aviation pilot trainers at Pensacola Naval Air Station after separating from the service. He had a TV &Radio a repair shop in his garage.
I would go over on weekends and ask him a million questions. He stopped me, and said that I was not allowed to ask him another thing unless I learned the color code for resistors by heart. This entailed not only the value on ohms, but also the tolerances, and types.
I did not get discouraged, but took it as a challenge, and that drove me to learn it, and prove not to him but myself that it was something I wanted to pursue, or was it just a curiosity or passing interest…
I went in the Air Force, and scored high on electronic and mechanical portion of entrance exam. But at first not an electronics technician. A B-52 gunner. But after 10 years, I retrained into Radio Electronics. I started out like anyone else, went to technical training, then apprentice, journeyman, then Master Technician.
When I retrained, I was an E-6, going to school alongside E1’s and E-2’s. Finished the school with a 99.125% grade average. After 17 blocks of instruction, and 17 - 100 question tests, I missed a total of 5 questions. There was also demonstration/performance evaluation on the actual radio equipment.
I had to apply myself, and spent 6-8 hours every night after school to learn for myself. They asked me to become an instructor upon graduation, but I declined, because I wanted to go out into the field and be a technician, not teach something that I had never actually done and had real world experience with.
You being a Marine, know what level of dedication and personal resolve it takes to make it in this world.
All I wanted to impart to you is to do some research. That is the first step. I wish you luck with reloading and know you have what it takes to learn it.
- Semper Fi. I got two uncles that are Marines. One is 92 years old, the other passed about 5 years ago. They taught me a lot. My Dad too, (Army and Navy) he was born in 1917 and served the entirety of WW2 in Europe.
