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The old guy in Tulsa said to tap on the GPS antenna with a screwdriver and I almost laughed in his face
Two months back I was chasing a intermittent GPS drop out on a King Air 200 and I had already swapped the antenna, checked the coax, and reseated the rack unit twice with no luck. An older A&P named Dale who works the hangar next to ours walked by and said to tap the top of the antenna with the handle of a screwdriver while watching the sat count on the test set. I thought he was messing with me, like some hangar folklore you pass down to the new guy. I humored him anyway and sure enough the signal dropped to zero on the third tap, turned out the connector inside the antenna base had a cold solder joint that only showed up with vibration. I felt like a idiot for the two days I wasted on it. Now any time I get a weird intermittent on a comm or nav box, I do the tap test before I start pulling panels. Has anyone else run into a cold joint inside a sealed antenna like that, or was this just a fluke on this one unit?
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wader716d ago
A buddy of mine fought a flaky transponder for a week and it turned out to be a cracked solder joint on the connector inside the antenna base, same deal. He wiggles the antenna now before he ever pulls the rack.
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