The Noob: The story of a wanna be
Hello everyone,
My name is Dave and I am a student at the Southeast Lineman Training Center in Trenton, Ga. I thought I would share with you a few small and continuing snipets of my experiences here at SLTC and after I graduate ( pretty confident for the 3rd week huh? )
A little information about me before I started at SLTC... I am currently 35 years old , and grew up in a small town in Florida called Vero Beach, graduated 619th out of 657, and went on from high school to work a number of jobs before spending 5 years in the resturant industry a few years in Lawn Maintenance and Landscaping and the last 7 years working for Comcast Cable ( initially TCI , then AT&T and finally Comcast over the 7 years ).
My time at Comcast
I often said that after I started they would have to burn me out of my job there... and in a matter of speaking they did. I had a 5 year goal of becoming a maintenance technician ( Tech that maintain the plant on the poles ), but managed to leap frog over that and ended up as a supervisor. Imagine my dismay when we were hit by Francis and Jeanne one month after my promotion and I learned that as a supervisor I recieved no overtime for working 14-18 hrs a day. After being in my desk for 6 months I realized I made a serious error and that while I might have been a decent supervisor I was a much better technician and prefered my time outdoors to time behind a desk. So I started making preperations to get back outside. In the process of this I soon discovered that while the Maint Techs make better money , they were grossly over worked wiht only 8 of them on 'on-call rotation' being called out all hours of the day and night to repair any outage or serious reception problem that may occur. The monies those techs were making didnt really seem worth the effort. Granted it was better than I was currently making , but the trade off of quality of life didnt seem worth it. I might add here that I often traded with other installer techs to work as back ups to the maint techs, but it didnt happen nearly as often as the regular maint techs.
It was during my transition time behind the desk that I discovered the forums here at powerlineman. I also started talking to a few FPL guys that had had contact with and so I started looking into how to become a lineman. Rather than start at the end of a shovel or a meter, I wanted something to give me an extra edge, so that I could jump into an apprentice position. I have worked for too many companies previously that would promise promotions in X amount of time but never came through, so the idea of working for a company for a few years before getting to apprentice at my age didnt seem viable. It was then that I came across NLTC and SLTC websites and recieved course catalogs for both. I started making preperations, putting my house in Vero Beach on the market, and 'lightening my load' so to speak. So in September of 2006 when I closed on the sale of my house. I decided that perhaps Georgia might be a better location to be in January, which is the first sessions of class I would be available for.
.....to be continued....
Pt IV: Havent I been here before?
So as the 2nd week ( first week of climbing ) started , it started with up downs.. up to our mark , and back down , all together, and then each one at a time. This gave our instructor pleanty of time to critque our methods, insert comments, and generally get loud. I seemed to have a common issue , I wasnt locking my legs fully as I went up. Luckily for me I didnt combine this problem with another common problem of keeping ones waist too close to the pole.
A few guys were slow to adapt to the height of 5ft at the feet. Having been on 28ft ladders as a 15ft daredevil, I was already used to the belt and strap. As the week progressed , we learned to trust our gear.. some of us needed a little encouragement which was in endless supply, if you didnt feel comfortable , the instructor would climb the pole and give you a hug and let you know it was all okay and you would be fine... He would even place his strap over yoursm and let his weight hang on your strap alone.. again to ensure you knew it would hold not only you , but him , as long as your legs were locked.
We learned that you could actually move that strap around the pole without touching the strap or the pole. Actually, we learned very quickly and with some pain that touching the pole at any time other than strap on and strap off.. was NOT a good idea and rather bad form.
Leaning back in our belts we tossed a basketball from pole to pole.. unless the guy to the left or right of you was missing.. then you had to toss the ball around THAT pole to the guy on the other side of it.
Also this week started our classroom activities.. Applied Mathmatics and Electrical Systems. Applied Mathmatics started out with whole numbers, and progressed through roots and powers. A calculator was supplied to each student , and the books showed you how to work each problem out in detail. On top of that the instructor made himself available after class or during lunches for those that didnt/couldnt grasp it right away. Mon Tues we covered new material , weds we went over the test and reviewed the subjects, and thursday we tested. Basically the same went for Electrical Systems... although this of course was more memorization of reading material and understanding some basic ideas.. Transmission,Sub Transmission, Distribution and Service. The idea of phase to phase and phase to neutral was introduced and a few relevant tales of the job were included.
Seeing how i was living in Chattanooga, I soon found out i was one of very few that lived there, actually there was one other in class that lived there, a ling time resident Tyrus. This guy was the largest and darkest member of the class, soft spoken but rather intimidating. We exchanged numbers in case of vehicle failure, and also agreed to get together to study on Weds nights. I would soon find out this really was a good idea, as it helped us both out tremendously.
As the end of this week came to an end, we actually placed our feet at the 15ft mark , and when we qualified, it was required that we go up , and rotate around the pole and come back down. There might have been more, but because of my current slacking posting here, I may have forgot it.. but last weeks qualification is still well engraved in my head.. and you will see that in the next post. After going up to the 15 ft mark ( and yes it was a tough climb ) the qualification seemed like a breeze. As a side note.. I aced both of my tests and T missed 1 on each.