The day a lightning strike gave me 18 hours of straight work

Back in 2019 I was working at the FBO in Wichita when a King Air came in after hitting a static discharge. The lightning had fried a line replaceable unit in the starboard NAV system and I had to track a burn pattern through the whole wiring bundle. Took me from 7am to almost 1am the next morning with nothing but coffee and a headlamp. Has anyone else had to deal with a full lightning damage check on an older airframe?

3 comments

3 Comments

emma9611d agoTop Commenter

Not sure my eyesight has ever fully recovered from one of those marathon sessions. Did a similar chase on an old Cessna 310 once, and by hour 14 I was starting to see little green wires everywhere, even with my eyes closed. Coffee just becomes a different kind of fuel at that point, it barely keeps you going anymore. And you're absolutely right about the messy bundles on some of the newer stuff, I've pulled panels on late model planes that looked like a squirrel had been nesting in there. Those older airframes might be a pain to trace, but at least they were usually laid out with some kind of logic. Just wish they had put in a few more access panels so I didn't have to contort myself like a pretzel for half the job.

dylan46311d ago

Bet you found some sketchy splices in those older bundles too?

spencer_gonzalez111d agoMost Upvoted

Respectfully gotta disagree, most of the old bundles I've seen were actually done cleaner than some of the newer hack jobs out there.