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Noticed something weird at the Burbank airport hangar visit
I was over at the Burbank airport last Tuesday helping a buddy look at a Cessna 172 that had a bad comm radio. While I was poking around the back of the avionics rack, I noticed the ground strap was bolted to a painted surface instead of bare metal. That little oversight can cause all kinds of noise issues. The plane had been through three radio swaps in the last year and nobody caught it. We cleaned it up and put the strap on bare aluminum. Fixed the noise problem right away. Has anyone else seen something like that on a plane that went through multiple shops without being caught?
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singh.jessica4mo ago
Three years ago I would've said "ah it's just a ground strap, how much trouble can a little paint really cause" (you know, classic overconfidence). Then I helped a guy with a Mooney that had this intermittent alternator surge and the first three shops he took it to all replaced the voltage regulator for no reason. I finally checked the engine ground cable and sure enough, the lug was bolted through a thick layer of powder coating on the firewall. Once we stripped that back to bare metal, the surge vanished completely. That one experience totally flipped my mindset about bonding and grounding being something you can half-ass. Now I treat every ground connection like it's a potential time bomb, even if it looks okay at first glance.
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cora_ramirez4mo ago
Oh man, "three radio swaps in the last year and nobody caught it" that is wild. I had basically the same thing happen with a Piper Archer I was helping a friend with. It had been through two shops for a persistent static on the intercom. I finally crawled under the panel and found the antenna coax was rubbing against a metal bracket, and the shielding had worn through. Taped it up and moved the cable, problem gone. I mean, it was just sitting there chafing for months, and nobody bothered to look.
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