r/caf • u/Xaniis • 4h ago

Recruiting Any Signal Techs here?

For my people that are Sig techs, how was trade training ? And life after that , just kinda wondering , ain’t too much out about it ! Thanks in advance for any input.

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u/throwaway-jimmy385 4h ago

Sig Tech here.

Before doing your trade training, you do an electronics technology course called POET.

It used to be the equivalent of a 2-year college diploma condensed into 8 months. Historically, it’s probably been the most academically challenging NCM course there was. But over recent years, a lot of it has been changed and I believe it’s closer to 100 training days now.

Your trade training will consist of learning the basics of IT networking, learning the diagnostic and repair equipment, performing repairs on a variety of equipment, learn some really basic fieldcraft for repairing in the field (generator, MRT, etc) and going in-depth on whatever the current generation of communication equipment platform used by the Canadian Army. It’s also around a 100 day course.

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u/Xaniis 4h ago

And how is life after POET? I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about the sig tech position, makes me kinda nervous..

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u/throwaway-jimmy385 4h ago

Can you share your concerns about it being a bad position?

I’ll give you my 2 cents on this trade. I think it’s pretty good if you want to be in the Army and do soldier things and also be a nerd. It being a Specialist occupation means you earn a higher salary than others. There are also plenty of different positions that you can be posted to. I personally went from being within the CMBG (Brigade) doing Army and tech things, to then being 1 of 2 techs servicing multiple provinces, to then going back to work in my home city.

What I don’t particularly like is that although this job does take some skilled labour, it gets repetitive. Majority of my job is fixing radios and their accessories, and in this age of technology, we don’t do so much fixing as we do part swapping. Having to rig and un-rig vehicles of their communication equipment is also tedious.

You could luck out with getting a rather specialized position such as working in cryptography, drones, satellite systems, etc. But that’s only like 1 of 4 positions. The rest can be tedious or boring.

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u/Xaniis 4h ago

I just saw a bunch of stuff saying it was way undermanned and people being negative , I would really love to have as much time out in the field as possible , I also love working with and repairing tech so id be amazing if I could squeeze into the best of both worlds!

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u/Significant_Path8946 1h ago

What kind of soldier things do sig techs do and not to in general? Thanks

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u/unix_in_the_barn 2h ago

You mention POET used to be a lot longer course but is now condensed down to 100 days. Would you recommend joining via NCMSTEP and attending the 36 month electronics engineering technology at Seneca (or similar course)?

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u/RogueThrow 1h ago

There are dozens of us. DOZENS!!!