Spent a full shift chasing a weird static on a comms radio

Honestly, I had a Cessna 172 in the hangar with a complaint about faint static in the headset only during transmit. Checked the obvious stuff, antenna connections, coax, even swapped the radio head. Ngl, it took me six hours to trace it back to a tiny bit of corrosion on the shield of the audio cable where it passed through a firewall grommet. The plane had been sitting for a while and moisture got in. Has anyone else had a sneaky issue like that where the problem was just a few strands of wire?

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3 Comments

oliviadixon5mo ago

Found a bad ground strap causing the same thing last month.

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ryan_carr595mo ago

It's wild how, like @oliviadixon's ground strap, the smallest hidden flaw can cause the biggest headaches!

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dianab684mo ago

2001 VW Jetta, spent 3 days chasing a rough idle. Had a friend with a better scanner, no codes at all. Replaced the coil pack, plugs, cleaned the MAF, nothing worked. Ended up being a slightly corroded pin on the ECU harness, not even a full break. So no, I don't think hidden flaws are always a huge deal sometimes it's just something you overlook that takes a minute to spot if you know where to look.

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