Intensive electro tech courses?

I have been working offshore as a Geotech Technician now for 5 years. Before this I was doing warranty repairs for Acer and Sony; playstations, laptops, LCDs mostly.

Unfortunately I don’t have any electrical training. This has cost me job opportunities.

My responsibilities at the moment are primarily paperwork and data interp. However, I have to assist CPT operators on deck all the time and sometimes underwater engineers or ROV guys. I’ve always found fixing things and working with my hands rewarding and I’m beginning to think doing a Geology degree was a mistake as it’s turned out to be less using the brain and more drudgery. I particularly miss the analytical flow of diagnosing a problem in my head from my days in warranty repair.

So now I’m looking at my options to get some electro-tech training with the hope of moving into a related field; I’d prefer Geotech or U/W work as that makes sense to me but ROV would be fine too.

The most solid option I’ve found is a 1 year post degree course in Aberdeen. However, a year in Aberdeen away from everyone would mean a lot of cost and time away from family and cost me my girlfriend I think. I’d also have to stop working offshore which is no good.
What I really need is an intensive course.

I looked at ROV courses and wondered if they might be a good substitute but from what I’m reading employers are not considering them good enough on their own (so I’d say they are 30-50% overpriced). You still need that electro-tech background and I’m not sure if my modular level with minimal soldering would be enough. Besides, I already had an otherwise great interview for chromatographs pipped at the post for failing a exam paper at the end of the interview (position was modular level… guess they just wanted a bit extra…)
I’ve also looked at hydrographic survey course since these are intensive and surveyors can possibly have more doors open to them. Unfortunately from what I can gather that would mean working as online surveyor before I can try to specialise in U/W engineer work, it doesn’t sound like a reliable plan and again it’s expensive.

Is there a summer school offering HND level electronics? Anything like that?
Of course marine electro would be best but that’s a bigger one to tackle.

I looked at distance learning. Personally I wouldn’t want to be doing that on it’s own but it could come as part of the solution.

Then again, perhaps I should just start making my own ROV and look generating my own nearshore work seeing as all these tickets are so damn expensive…