David – Paisley

Chief Engineer <3000kW Oral questions at MCA Glasgow 09/09/2019
Result: Pass. 1 hour 20 min
Paper work, looked through discharge book, asked about previous vessels and the main engines on my last vessel.
He stated that he was following MGN 69.
He started by asking how can you tell the health of your engines? (4 strokes)
How do you measure Pmax Pcomp?
How do you use a Peak Pressure Indicator?
You’re on passage and you notice high exhaust temps on one unit on your M/E? He was looking for exhaust valve problems here.
What would you do? Looking for notify bridge, removing some load of the engine and get some down time to replace the head. Discussed having a spare cylinder head ready to go.
He asked about fuel conditioning? Purifiers.
What type of fuels do you use?
What would you change on the purifier with different fuels? Gravity disc.
Your fuel system from tank to delivery valve?
Discussed briefly electronic injection, governor, speed response and load cards.
How does the jerk fuel pump work?
What controls the amount of fuel going into the delivery valve?
When the helical edge uncovers the spill port is that the start or finish of injection?
What safeties on an air compressor?
Safeties on an air receiver?
How does an air start explosion happen?
Draw out your air start system?
How does your air turbine starter work?
Do you carry spares?
What gearbox do you have?
Draw out the CPP system?
Explain using the drawing? I had been practicing this and he said afterward he liked the drawing!
If the bridge lost propulsion control what would you do?
How do you work the emergency CPP control?
How do you get the commands from the bridge? Telegraph.
If your electrical system didn’t work? Switch to local control on the gearbox.
Is this an emergency procedure?
How often do you do it?
What steering gear do you have?
What alarms are there on your steering gear? Also wanted to hear visual/audio
What’s the difference between a steering motor and an ordinary motor?
Where does the power supply come from? Looking for emergency generator room.
Explain the emergency steering procedure?
How often is it done?
Your vessel has just dry docked and you’re doing the first hull survey, what are you looking for? Went from bow to stern here looking for damage, sea grates, bilge keels, general condition, etc.
How do you check stern tube wear down?
What would you be looking for when surveying the rudder? Looking for ensuring the rudder had no water ingress.
You mentioned OCR alarm earlier how does that work?
What are the three faults you get on an electrical circuit.
How do you know you have an earth fault and what do you do?
What are the dangers of an earth fault?
What are the dangers of multiple earth faults?
What are IR’s
How do you use a megger.
What electrical maintenance do you do on your alternators? Looking for disconnecting AVR while doing IR’s.
What can you do to your alternator in dry dock? Chemical cleaning I think he was looking for.
How does a brushless alternator work?
If you had an equal but low voltage output what could that be? Happy with rectifier bridge and changing all diodes out.
What maintenance do you do on batteries?
What are normal and low SG readings?
What is free surface effect? Virtual loss of GM due to movement of liquid reducing your righting lever. (Thank you Piyush)
We discussed slack tanks and water movement on large deck areas.
You’ve been involved in a collision and a normally empty ballast tank is holed and you’ve got a list, what do you do to get back to port? I started to freak out a bit here but what he was wanting was shifting fuel to counter the list.
What fixed fire fighting system do you have aboard?
How does it work?
What maintenance do you do on it?
How often?
Do you have contractors on board to service the system?
How often?
What happens to any fixed fire system during dry dock?
What fire detection alarms have you aboard?
How often are they tested?
What class of bulkheads in machinery space?
What does A60 mean?
Entry in to a confined space?
Levels of oxygen?
Levels on explosimeter?
What certificates does a standard cargo ship carry?
What does the ISM code mean to you as a chief engineer?
What is ISM DOC?
What is the ISM SMC?
What are the companies responsibility’s?
How do you prepare for an ISM audit?
What documentation should you have ready?
You mentioned contingency plans earlier, do you have a grounding contingency plan?
What sort of info would that have in it?
What is Class?
What is Port State Authority and what do they do?
And the magic words, I’m pleased to Inform you that you’ve passed!