c/avionics-technicians

A rainy night in Seattle taught me to always check the grounds first

I was working a night shift at SeaTac on a CRJ-900, chasing a weird autopilot fault that only showed up in heavy rain. The logs were pointing to the flight control computer, so I was ready to pull and replace it, which is a huge job. My lead, an old guy named Carl, walked over, looked at the work order, and just said 'Go check pin 14 on the main avionics ground block in the wheel well. Trust me.' I was soaked and annoyed, but I did it. Sure enough, the terminal was loose and covered in light corrosion. A five-minute clean and tighten fixed what I was about to spend four hours on. He told me later he saw the same thing on a dozen planes at that same airport because of how the rain gets driven up into the bay. Now I start EVERY fault tree from the ground up, literally. Anyone else have a specific airport or plane type that seems to have its own special gremlins?

TIL a bad ground on a Garmin G1000 can hide as a random comms drop

Took me 6 hours to trace it back to a single corroded pin in the main rack connector. Anyone ever have a gremlin that simple waste a whole afternoon?

Had a nav system on a King Air 200 in Boise just start spitting out random altitude data during pre-flight.

Everything checked fine on the ground, but the second we powered up for taxi, the HSI started showing us at 15,000 feet while we were still on the tarmac. Tore into the wiring behind the panel, found a single pin in the connector for the ADC was backed out maybe a millimeter. Must have been just enough to make intermittent contact. Took all of ten seconds to reseat it, but it ate up an hour of troubleshooting time. What's the weirdest 'simple' fault you've chased that turned out to be something stupid like that?

I finally figured out that intermittent comms fault on a King Air in Wichita after three days of chasing ghosts.

Turns out a pin in the audio panel connector was backing out just enough to lose contact during turbulence. Anyone else had a headache like that with a D-sub?

Why does nobody talk about the actual failure rate of those new solid-state ADCs?

I was reading a report from the FAA's 2023 maintenance data, and it said the mean time between failures for the new solid-state air data computers is around 12,000 flight hours. I always heard they were supposed to be 'bulletproof' and last the life of the aircraft. That's a lot lower than I expected, especially compared to the older pneumatic systems they're replacing. It makes me wonder if we're trading one set of problems for another, just with fancier boxes. Has anyone else had to pull one of these units for a premature fault?

Volunteering at the local air museum led to a cool avionics find

Last weekend, I helped out at our town's small air museum during their cleanup day. I was checking an old trainer plane's radio stack, mostly just dusting things off. Behind a loose panel, I spotted a handwritten note about a frequency calibration trick from the 70s. It was a neat piece of history I'd never heard about before. I showed it to the other volunteers, and we all got into talking about how they did things back then. The museum head was so excited, he wants to frame it next to the plane. It felt awesome to connect a bit of local aviation past to what we do now. Just a small thing, but it made the whole day really special!

PSA: My altimeter calibration blunder

The pilot was confused about our altitude in Denver.

King Air autopilot quit with no warning lights

Was running a post maintenance check on the autopilot. It just shut off halfway through the test. What's the first thing you look at when this happens?

Found a weird trick for cleaning connector pins at the flea market

Old toothbrush and some contact cleaner does the job. Idk why I never thought of it before.

Shoutout to the community college avionics lab near my house

They let me practice on a real flight simulator console. Nailed the autopilot calibration after three tries. What local spots help you train?

Am I the only one who still hand-solders some connectors out of habit?

Honestly, I picked this up from an old timer who insisted on perfect joints. With modern crimp tools everywhere, it feels like a lost art. Ngl, it's saved me a few times when parts were scarce.

Stumbled upon my grandpa's avionics toolkit and it's splitting our shop views

I was cleaning the storage area last Friday and dug up his old tool roll from the 70s. It's full of analog meters and hand tools we barely use now. Today, we mostly rely on digital test sets that give us readouts in seconds. Half the crew says working with physical gear taught them to really understand the systems. The other half loves how new tech cuts down on guesswork and keeps flights on time. I've seen both sides, like when a digital diagnostic missed a corroded connector that a simple continuity test found. What do you all think? Are we losing something important or just getting better at the job?

Serious question, why do we always trash talk sim training after my airport visit?

I just got back from a week at a training center where they had full flight sims with working avionics. Most techs I know say sims are useless for real world fixes. But running through faults in that sim showed me patterns I'd never see on the bench. It felt like being on the plane without leaving the ground. Maybe we should give sims more credit for learning on the go.

A Loose Screw Sent Me on a Wild Goose Chase

I was fixing a spotty radio on a Piper last Friday. The audio kept dropping out, so I pulled out all the schematics. I spent ages testing every circuit with my meter. Then I spotted a small screw bouncing in the avionics bay. I convinced myself it was shorting something critical. After tightening it, the radio still acted up. The real culprit was a worn wire behind the glare shield. I felt pretty silly for blaming the screw. Now I look for the simple stuff first before diving deep.

My stubborn habit of checking connectors before software

I mean, maybe it's just me, but jumping straight to the computer feels like skipping steps. Last week, a simple wiggle test found a bad pin that the diagnostics said was fine.

Caught a weird glitch in the ADS-B signal over my suburb during the storm yesterday