Serious question, what's your go-to method for chasing a stubborn intermittent fault?

Last month on a King Air in Billings, I spent two full days on a VHF comm that would drop out only above 10,000 feet. I finally found a cracked coax shield under the insulation by using a signal generator and a borrowed spectrum analyzer. What's your first move when the fault won't show up on the ground?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_xena24d ago

Start by blaming the plane and making a fresh pot of coffee, honestly. My first move is usually to just sit in the seat and stare at the panel for way too long, hoping the problem will feel sorry for me and show itself. After that, it's a lot of swapping known-good parts from other planes until I get lucky, which feels less like skill and more like guessing. I've definitely created a few new problems while trying to fix the original ghost.

casey14524d ago

Man, I feel that, I once chased a similar ghost on a Navajo for a week.

norag3824d agoProlific Poster

Ever check the bonding jumpers on the avionics rack? Found one on that same airframe that was just loose enough to kill the autopilot only when it got hot.