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“repairing problems around the house when my dad was deployed.”

I’ll bet you wish you’d had YouTube back then!!

I’ll bet you wish you’d had YouTube back then!!

It didn't exist in the late 60s. I was perfectly happy to pull out repair manuals. I was competent at electrical wiring by age 10. Satisfactory in natural gas plumbing and soldering copper pipes to replace a water heater. Youtube would have been nice, but you use what you have. I rode my bicycle 15 miles to an HVAC shop to purchase a replacement gas valve for my home furnace. The cheap fix with a new thermocouple didn't resolve the problem. It was a failed valve. The replacement was OEM spec and did the job. It was nice to have heat again in the house.

During my employment at Marine Electric Co in San Diego, my boss sent me to a foreign tuna seiner. The VHF radio wasn't working. My boss said, "It will take you 5 minutes. You won't need tools". Not so. It was a German VHF radio with full duplex capability on the marine operator frequencies. No transmit. The repair manual was onboard the boat. In German of course. No problem. I speak sufficent German to deal with the manual. 10 minutes on my bench and I found the culprit. It was necessary to order a replacement part from Germany. Just over a week later, the part arrived. A few minutes of effort to install it. Bingo! Working radio. Back to the boat.

The comment, "It will take you 5 minutes. You won't need tools" became something of a meme in the office. Fair warning that you may be facing a bigger issue than expected.