Rant: That conversation with a senior tech made me feel dumb about wire repairs

Was talking to Dave from our Dallas hangar last week, he's been doing avionics since the 80s. He told me I'm overthinking my cold solder joint repairs, that I should just cut and re-pin instead of trying to reflow everything. Hit different because he showed me a bundle he did in 3 minutes that would've taken me 20. Has anyone else had a senior guy call out a bad habit you didn't know you had?

2 comments

2 Comments

caseyclark20d ago

Dave from Dallas sounds like he's been soldering since before I was born, so that's a lot of wisdom to just drop on a guy. I had a similar wake-up call with a master mechanic on a generator once, and he just looked at my work and said "that's pretty but it ain't practical." Felt like I got caught coloring outside the lines in art class. Now I got a new rule for myself: if it takes me more than 10 minutes on a simple repair, I'm probably overcomplicating it. Sometimes the old school guys just have a way of cutting through all the noise and showing you the simple path. Still stings a little, but it's good medicine.

laura94020d ago

Casey's 10 minute rule is solid, but I'd take it a step further. The old guys like Dave have seen so many repairs fail because someone tried to get fancy with a reflow when a fresh pin would hold for another 20 years. When I started doing wire repairs on comms gear, I kept trying to salvage every little thing, then had a lead tell me "that joint isn't worth saving, it's just wire." He was right, you waste more time and materials messing with a half baked reflow than just cutting clean and starting over. Now I ask myself if the part has to be perfect or just functional, and most of the time the answer is functional. Practical beats pretty every time in avionics.