Update: My old way of tracking parts was a mess

For years, I just wrote part numbers and serials on a notepad and hoped I could read my own writing later. About six months ago, I saw a guy at a hangar in Phoenix using a simple spreadsheet on his phone. I tried it on the next job, a Cessna 172 annual, and it cut my paperwork time in half. Now I can find any part's history in seconds. Anyone else have a simple trick that saved them a ton of time?

4 comments

4 Comments

nancy_king292mo ago

Oh man, that's a huge win. My buddy who's a mechanic was in the same boat, always losing sticky notes. He finally started taking a quick picture of each part with his phone before he removed it, and then putting those photos in a folder named for the job. He said it saved his butt more than once when putting things back together.

emma_garcia13d ago

My buddy is a diesel mechanic and he tried the photo thing too. Worked great for a while until his phone died halfway through a transmission rebuild. Had to guess where twelve bolts went. Took him three hours longer than it should have. Now he keeps a cheap disposable camera in his toolbox as a backup.

quinnm772mo ago

Honestly, that photo trick saved me too.

marybutler2mo ago

That photo folder idea is exactly the kind of simple fix I love. I used to scribble notes about wire routing and then forget which scribble was which. Now I just take a ten second video panning around an area before I touch anything. Watching it back is way clearer than any note I ever wrote.