Wings of fire - Sir APJ ABDUL KALAM Wings of fire | Page 26
(HAL) at Bangalore as a trainee. There I worked on engine
overhauling as part of a team. Hands-on work on aircraft
engine overhauling was very educative. When a principle
learnt in the classroom is borne out by practical experience,
it creates a strange sense of excitement—akin to
unexpectedly running into an old friend among a crowd of
strangers. At HAL, I worked on the overhauling of both
piston and turbine engines. The hazy concepts of gas
dynamics and diffusion processes in the working principle
of after burning came into sharper focus in my mind. I was
also trained in radial engine-cum-drum operations.
I learned how to check a crankshaft for wear and tear,
and a connecting rod and crankshaft for twist. I did
calibrations of a fixedpitch fan fitted to a super-charged
engine. I opened up pressure and acceleration-cum-speed
control systems, and air starter supply systems of turbo-
engines. Getting to understand feathering, un-feathering
and reversing of propeller engines was very interesting.
The demonstration of the delicate art of beta (blade angle
control) by HAL technicians still lingers in my memory. They
had neither studied in major universities, nor were they
merely implementing what their engineer-in-charge was
suggesting. They had been working h ands-on for years and
this had given them something like an intuitive feel for the
work.
Two alternative opportunities for employment, both
close to my longstanding dream of flying, presented
themselves before me when I came out of HAL as a
graduate aeronautical engineer. One was a career in the
Air Force and another was a job at the Directorate of
Technical Development and Production, DTD&P(Air), at
the Ministry of Defence. I applied for both. The interview
calls arrived from both the places almost simultaneously. I
was asked to reach Dehra Dun by the Air Force
recruitment authorities and Delhi by DTD&P(Air). The boy
from the Coromandel Coast took a train to the North of
India. My destination was more than 2000 km away, and
was to be my first encounter with the vastness of my
motherland.
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