Appreciation post: The old timer who showed me how to read a schematic right

I used to jump straight to troubleshooting with a multimeter and just poke around until I found something. One day at the hangar in Phoenix, this senior tech named Dave saw me staring at a board and just said "stop guessing." He walked me through tracing the entire signal path on paper first before touching a single wire. It took maybe 10 minutes but it saved me from chasing a ghost ground for hours. Now I always pull out the schematic and map it out before I even grab my tools. Has anyone else had a mentor change how you approach a repair?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_oscar1mo ago

Old Dave doing that with you sounds like a real turning point, and it matches my own experience perfectly. There was a guy named Frank at a shop I worked at years ago who pretty much forced me to do the same thing. He caught me one afternoon with my meter leads all over a power supply board, just stabbing at it, and he walked over and pulled out the paper schematic from a drawer. He made me draw the whole voltage path with a highlighter before he'd even let me flip the board over. That simple act of tracing first, testing second, changed how I look at every repair now. It's like the difference between reading directions and just guessing which way to turn the wheel. Now I can't even start a job without the schematic sitting right there on the bench next to me.

grantf731mo ago

Tracing first, testing second - sounds like Frank saved you from a lot of blown fuses and frustration. How many times did you forget the highlighter before it became habit?

charliestone1mo ago

Honestly @the_oscar, Frank sounds like a legend, we all need that guy early on.