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I just read a report from the FAA's 2023 data that made me rethink our wire harness inspection habits
It said that in over 60% of general aviation incidents linked to avionics, the root cause was traced back to connector pin issues, not the actual black boxes we spend so much time on. I found this in their annual safety review while looking up something else. Are we maybe focusing too much on swapping units and not enough on the simple pin and socket checks first?
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jake_wells125mo ago
My buddy had a Garmin unit that kept dropping signal on his Cessna... they swapped the whole box twice before someone finally wiggled the D-sub connector and saw a pin was barely making contact. Cost him a fortune in shop time for a five-cent pin. That report doesn't surprise me at all.
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brooke_taylor5mo ago
Actually, that FAA report is from 2022, not 2023! The data is still super relevant, but getting the year right matters for people trying to look it up. It definitely backs up the point about checking connections first though.
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violag805mo ago
Exactly, it's the classic "swap the box" reflex that costs so much time and money. We get trained to trust the expensive unit over the cheap connector, but the data shows it's usually the other way around. A solid visual and wiggle test should be step one, not step five.
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noahs375mo ago
Guess my habit of jiggling the TV cable before calling the repairman is basically aviation-grade troubleshooting.
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