"Commander Dave" wrote in message
...
Greetings all,

Having been laid off from my job, I was thinking that it was time for a
change and want to take a "distance learning" program in electronics. Not
having any idea where to begin, I thought I would ask for the group's
advice.

Situation:

I am 39 years old and have worked in IT for many years and last held a
Network Administrator position. They closed my last place of employment
and
it seems that the job market is pretty tight around here for the this type
of work. I also do not have any formal degree, just lots of experience. I
am
currently playing Mr. Mom to my 20 month old boy and 4 month old girl,
which
keeps me running... :-) Traditional learning (i.e. live classes) is pretty
much out of the question.

My hobby is coin-op video games, collecting, repair and general tinkering.
I
can fix many games and monitors, but my skills are self taught and mainly
rely on the shotgun approach. I enjoy working with electronics, and would
like to open a small business repairing various types of electronics
equipment. Not sure exactly what, but I do know that it would probably be
older electronics rather than "state of the art" type stuff. Perhaps
vintage
computer/video game restorations? I think the key word here would be
"vintage", but I am not totally locked into that category.

What I would like to find:

A distance learning program that is EFFECTIVE in teaching electronics
skills
mainly for the purpose of troubleshooting and repair, but doesn't have to
be
limited to just that.

An Electrical Engineering degree program would be nice too, but a degree
is
far from being required. I need practical teaching. Classes on video tape
would be nice, not just book learning. The main idea is that I get my
money's worth.

I did find one online, but never heard of it before... here is the link:
http://pcdi-homestudy.com/courses/el/outline.html
The course material sounds ok, but it is all dry learning - no live class
video.

Anyone out there have any good information on a electronics distance
learning program? Any good advice? Gotcha's?

Thanks everyone,
-Commander Dave

Dave, having been in the consumer electronics repair since 1957, I can
tell you it is a dying market. If I were younger, I would learn Cam-corder
repair. In my city of 150,000, there is not one shop that repairs them. As
to repairing old video\arcade games, there's not much of a market for that.
I get maybe 1 or 2 requests a year asking for someone that repairs arcade
machines. Plasma TVs would be another thing to learn. Of the 3 TV shops in
my town, not one of them knows anything about Plasma TVs. If one breaks
down, it will be a factory Tech that will make the service call. As to home
study courses, I took an advanced electronics course while in the army & it
went well for about 6 months. They then took up algebra & that's where they
lost me. Not having an instructor to ask questions to made it a real pain &
I lost interest in it.
Good luck.