Pro tip: spent 45 minutes chasing a phantom fault in a King Air only to find a chafed wire behind the panel in Wichita | Avionics Technicians - Topic Shares
Pro tip: spent 45 minutes chasing a phantom fault in a King Air only to find a chafed wire behind the panel in Wichita
Two weeks ago I had a squawk on a King Air 350 out of Wichita saying the #2 nav kept dropping and coming back on its own, and I did the whole dance of swapping the LRU, ringing out the antenna, and re-pinning the connector. Turned out a wire bundle had been rubbing on a rib since the last panel pull, and the insulation was worn down to bare copper on one conductor. I now run my hand along every bundle I can reach before I start pulling parts, because parts swapping burns hours faster than it fixes anything. Anyone else got a go-to for tracking down intermittent faults besides just wiggling wires and hoping?
Chafed wires behind panels are way more common than people want to admit, and half the intermittent squawks I have seen trace back to a bundle rubbing somewhere it should not. Preaching the wiggle-and-look method is fine until you are on flat rate and burning a whole afternoon on a ten minute fix. Running your hand along the harness costs nothing and saves more time than any fancy tester ever will.