Allen and Joel chat with Alex Pucacco, an engineer in the wind industry, about his new book, "Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer". The book shares real-life stories and anecdotes from Alex's 10+ years working as a wind turbine technician and engineer, set in the days of the "Wild West" in wind. It follows an apprentice wind tech named Aaron as he tries to get experience in the industry. Each chapter features trips to different wind farms around the world where Aaron encounters colorful characters and gets into humorous scrapes and mishaps while working on turbines. Tales of issues like missing tools, breaking down vehicles, and adventures at local hotels highlight the lifestyle of constantly traveling techs. If you're looking for a holiday gift for your wind industry friends, this is it!



Buy the book!



Alex's Website: https://windyproductions.com/product/where-the-wind-takes-you/



Amazon: https://a.co/d/9xiMHLN







Allen Hall: Our guest is author Alex Pucacco. Alex is based in Nottingham, England, and is an engineer by training, working in the wind industry since 2011. Alex is the author of a brand new book about being a wind turbine technician and engineer. It's called "Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer".



Alex, welcome to the program.



Alex Pucacco: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.



Allen Hall: So there's very few books about being a wind turbine technician or engineer in the field. Yours is interesting because it's based on real life experiences. And I know you've changed the names to protect the innocent quote unquote, innocent, right?



It's, but it's really based upon on some level, your interactions and working in winds, you've been in wind over 10 years. And you went through some of the, what I would call early times in wind, when wind started to become big. And Scotland and it looks like most, mostly Scotland early on, at least some of the book is about that.



I want to hear some of the details, like how did you get into wind? Why did you get into wind? What was some of those early experiences because there's a that at that time it was a difficult industry to get into.



Alex Pucacco: It was and I think it still is to a degree and as I would say it's better to be lucky than smart. I did I wouldn't say mine is a conventional route. And I think since releasing the book a lot of people have approached me to ask desperate to get into wind, what's the best way? So I guess in repayment for that I have I'm putting together an article at the moment to help young people get into wind because it is very competitive and difficult despite us crying out for more technicians. So yeah, I did a engineering degree at the University of Nottingham, which was completely useless.



Didn't pick up a spanner in the entire time. Graduated into a recession ended up working for a small UK manufacturer of off grid wind turbines, the tiny ones on the back of boats. Did a bit of residential solar for a bit, and then I went to California Wind Tech, which was like a two month course they did in California, just as an introduction to electrical and hydraulic schematic reading, and then I got a real lucky break.



I applied for a salesy operations job, which was a real sort of dog's body type role. And they gave me a chance at a wind turbine gearbox consultancy that was just starting up in wind. A load of people had left on maternity leave. We didn't have enough people. And, we had more work than we could deal with.



So very often there'd be a shout around the office, who wants to go to Australia, America, Scotland, to do whatever job it was, main bearing inspection, portable vibration demonstration, something like that. Stick my hand up. Yeah, I'll go. Get yourself booked. You travel. Off you go. And that was it.



You were gone for two, three weeks. And it was fantastic. I was very lucky.



Joel Saxum: So this must have been before kids and wife,