Had a supervisor swear by fiber optic cleaning sticks... I was dead wrong about them

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?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia84310h ago

Spent six months using a paper towel and my pinky finger before someone showed me the right way.

rose_hart318h ago

julia843 that pinky method sounds rough, how long did it take you to realize it was causing more harm than help? I can only imagine the frustration when a simple cleaning stick fixed something that had been causing grief for months. Sometimes the old school methods really are the best, even if they feel overkill at first.

dianab688h ago

Six months is a long time to deal with that. But honestly, is it really that big a deal? I mean, I've used my pinky to clean my ears when I didn't have anything else around, and it never caused some huge problem. Seems like people get really worked up about stuff that's just a minor annoyance. A little dirt in the ear isn't gonna kill you. Maybe just take a shower and let the water do its thing?