I went with the Fluke 123 over the Tektronix THS720 because it handled the vibration better on a Gulfstream GIV in Savannah last week, has anyone else found one brand holds up better on the ramp?
Last week I had to run a new set of nav light wires through a tight wing root on a 172, and my fiberglass fish tape kept binding up. I remembered an old timer showing me to tie a fishing weight to some mason's line and let gravity do the work, got it through in under 10 minutes. Anyone else still use old-school methods like this?
Been in avionics about 4 years now, always used the $30 crimpers from the local shop. Figured they got the job done. Then last month a D-sub pin fell right off a harness during a test. Lost two hours troubleshooting. Senior tech Jerry told me to borrow his Daniels crimper. Night and day difference. The pin actually locked in. Anyone else have a tool upgrade that saved your ass?
Turned out to be a chafed wire behind the panel that I overlooked on the first three checks because the insulation was pin-hole sized. Has anyone else had a tiny wire fault take way longer than it should to find?
I was grabbing coffee last Wednesday and heard this lead tech from another hangar tell a new guy that our job is mostly just pressing test buttons and swapping boxes until something works. That really got under my skin because I've spent the last 6 months chasing an intermittent fault on a G5000 system where the logs pointed nowhere and I had to trace every wire back to the connector pins on the LRU. On one hand I get it, sometimes you do just cycle a circuit breaker and the problem goes away, but on the other hand the real skill is knowing which button to push and why based on system knowledge. Maybe I'm being too sensitive but it felt like he was selling the whole trade short to a rookie who needs to understand the depth of this work. How do you guys handle people who act like avionics is just plug and play? Am I wrong for getting worked up over a comment like that?
Back in '08 at the Miami hangar, this guy named Jerry who worked on 727s since the 70s pulled me aside and said factory crimps on cannon plugs are garbage. I laughed it off until last year I found a loose pin in a brand new Garmin harness on a King Air. Jerry was right, I check EVERY factory connection now or I pay for it later. Anyone else re-crimp fresh out of the box or just me?
Had a Cessna 172 in the hangar with intermittent transponder issues. Turned out a ground wire was frayed inside the bundle. $0 fix, saved the owner a $600 replacement quote. Anyone else find dumb simple fixes like that?
I was troubleshooting a G430W that kept giving bad GPS data on approach. The owner said it worked fine before. After 2 hours of checking antennas and coax, I realized the nav database was from 2019. Updated it to the current cycle and everything locked in immediately. Has anyone else had a simple database fix solve a nagging problem that seemed way bigger?
The damn thing kept showing a nav antenna fault but every connection tested fine - turned out the static wick had a hairline crack letting moisture in during deicing. Has anyone else had a fault that just kept leading you in circles like that?
I used to think spending 2 hours on autopilot trim calibration was overkill until a crosswind landing went sideways last month. Now I swear by it. What’s your take-do you cut corners here or go by the book like me?
I spent 6 years chasing wires with a basic tone generator and probe, always second guessing if I had the right wire when bundles got tight. Last month I finally picked up a digital signal map probe that injects a coded signal and it cut my wire tracing time from 45 minutes to under 10 on a 50-pin harness. Has anyone else made that switch and noticed a big difference in accuracy?
Guy told me I was wasting time buzzing every single pin because I wasn't looking at the voltage drop. Now I just use a milliohm meter and caught a 0.3 ohm discrepancy on a harness that would have passed normal testing.
Last month in Denver, I had a Cessna 172 where the factory diagram said the landing gear indicator wires should be on pins 4 and 6. But when I traced it, the actual plane had them on pins 3 and 7 from a previous repair. I ended up spending 3 hours troubleshooting because I trusted the book over my own eyes. How do you guys handle it when the schematics don't match reality, do you follow the diagram or trust what's in front of you?
Last Tuesday I showed up to swap out a radar unit on a 737 and the mounting screws were stripped from the factory. Then Wednesday the weather radar display on the test bench threw a fault code I've never seen in 8 years. By Friday I had three different LRUs fail the same self test after install, and the lead kept asking if I was skipping steps. The whole week was a mess of bad batches and weird glitches that made me second guess every reading. Has anyone else had a string of bad luck like that where the parts themselves were the problem?
I was pulling a G650 through a Phase 4 check at DFW and hit 4 separate ground faults on the same LRU tray in 6 hours. Each time I re-terminated, checked the harness, and swapped the module, it still tripped until I found a tiny nick in the shield drain wire near the backshell. Has anyone else had a run of bad luck like that on a single bird?
I was on the fence about getting a Flir thermal camera for a while. Finally pulled the trigger on a basic model for around $400. My first week I used it to find a hot resistor in a power supply that was causing intermittent GPS dropouts on a King Air. That one find saved me probably 10 hours of chasing wires with a multimeter. The old method would have taken forever swapping boxes. Has anyone else had good luck with thermal imaging on bizjet avionics?
I was wiring up a new Garmin G1000 harness at the hangar in Tucson last Tuesday and my lead handed me a box of Cletop cleaning sticks for the LC connectors. I figured a puff of canned air was good enough, but after three failed continuity checks on the LRU I gave his method a shot. Anybody else ignore a specific cleaning step for years and then kick themselves when they finally try it the right way?
I bought a Tektronix TDS 220 off eBay for $200 from a seller in Arizona. Turns out channel 2 was completely dead and the calibration sticker was clearly faked. Now I'm out the money and stuck using my old fluke meter for everything. Anybody got a reliable place to grab refurbished test gear?
Always figured they were mostly hype since I'd been using cardboard for years without issues. Then I zapped a $400 comm panel last month and finally bought a proper 3M mat kit from Grainger. Has anyone else had a close call like that change their mind on something they thought was overkill?
I was working on a 737 that had an intermittent GPS dropout that had been ghosting the senior guys for weeks. Pulled the LRU, checked the coax, nada. Then I just sat there watching the rack for 20 minutes and noticed a tiny flicker on the power LED when the AC cycling kicked on. Traced it to a pin on the power supply connector that was slightly bent. Replaced the connector, 3 hours of testing, not a single dropout since. The lead tech bought me lunch and everything. Anyone else ever catch a weird intermittent by just staring at the box long enough?
Been battling faded or scratched part numbers on some 20 year old circuit boards from a King Air. Tried different lighting, magnifiers, even my phone camera zoom. Nothing worked. Then a guy at the hangar in Wichita told me to wet the surface with a drop of isopropyl alcohol and hit it with a bright flashlight at an angle. Could read the numbers clear as day after that. Anyone else got a weird trick for identifying components when the markings are gone?
He said SDRs fail in the field way more than analog Collins gear from the 70s, and after watching two FlexRadio units brick on a King Air install last month, I'm starting to wonder if reliability matters more than features for GA flying, has anyone else gone back to older equipment and regretted it or found it actually works better?
I was out at Centennial Airport swapping a KX-155 for a new GNC 355 in a 172. Everything was going fine until I powered it up and the annunciator panel stayed dark. Turns out I missed a pinched wire behind the radio stack that was grounding out the whole bus. Took me two hours to trace it with a DMM. Has anyone else run into issues with those old Cessna wire bundles getting brittle near the firewall?
I was chasing a ghost signal on a King Air radar last Tuesday in Seattle, and the senior tech just pointed at the gain setting I always left on auto. Has anyone else had a basic setting trip them up for way too long?
Last year on a Piper Archer I had to pick between a $2000 Garmin GPS 155XL from a salvage yard or a brand new com radio for the same money. I went with the GPS and paired it with my existing KX 155. That old 155XL gave me WAAS-like approach capability that saved my butt in low viz over Ohio last November. Has anyone else taken a gamble on used avionics and come out ahead?