You need two types of experience: deep and abstract. You need the deep experience of having worked inside the beaurocracy of a huge effort on some tiny piece o

You need two types of experience: deep and abstract. You need the deep experience of having worked inside the beaurocracy of a huge effort on some tiny piece of the project. You need the abstract experience of having built a smaller, less complicated version of an entire plane yourself. Think RC model plane here. And yes you should be at least an RC pilot. With both of those experiences you will be able to extrapolate very closely everything you need to know to be succesful in establishing an engineering culture.