Hypothetical.

I'm 15 days from the nearest road, and the nearest airport is an additional 15 days from that point in the road. I'm changing tapes, the tape door is open, a Land Rover drives by through the middle of a mud puddle, covering me, the camera, and the exposed tape head. This is the only camera we have. I have to fix it.

If I can spend the next 48 hours in a mosquito net with a Swiss Army knife, water, alcohol, Q-Tips, and a cleaning tape, I will have saved the production.

I know there must be a handful of people who could actually do this because they learned this stuff somewhere. Where?

If I wanted to work on my XL-1 and perform the work that the factory techs currently perform, where would I get that training?

Is there a school, university, vocational program that teaches rudimentary service skills?

I'm looking for an answer other than the school of hard knocks or trial and error.

Tom Hardwick has a good article about how to clean cam heads, but his article is down at the moment.

I assume techs take engineering and then get further training with the company that hires them.

Factory techs typically have vocational or two year t3echnical trainig followed by factory sponsored (not necessarly at the factory) training on the specific gear they work on to learn its characteristics and the stuff that is not covered in the service manuals.

My observation is that most electrical engineering schools are more theory oriented.

Many of the Factory Chief Technicians in this country are Japanese and spend several years in the states before rotating back to Japan. The training requirements are probably higher in Japan than in the states. Don is correct that most have vocational or trade school training. The factories (manufactures) also offer training on repairs. The courses are usually a week long, fairly expensive, and do not cover most of the prosumer cameras.

Thanks, Guys.

My expertise with my XL-1 is limited to a standard cleaning tape at the prescribed hours. Is there anyone here doing significantly more than this? If yes, are there links other than the "down" Tom Hardwick link that you have used as a reference?