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Had a pilot insist his autopilot was haunted because it kept pitching down at exactly 2,500 feet over Phoenix. I was ready to write him off until I found a single frayed wire in the static port heater circuit.
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terry_shah1718d agoTop Commenter
My old Cessna had a weird shudder at exactly 65 knots. It turned out to be a single loose screw on a flap hinge, which changed the airflow just enough. Sometimes the simple, weird fix is the right one.
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charlesj4619d ago
See, that's the kind of thing that makes me doubt these stories... a single frayed wire causing a repeatable pitch down at a specific altitude? It feels too perfect. More likely there was a whole chain of issues, and the wire was just the last piece. Those systems are way more complicated than one bad connection. I've seen guys blame ghosts when they just don't want to admit they missed something during pre-flight.
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