After seeing three techs in our hangar skip the avionics cooling fan check on pre-flights, I'm convinced we're setting ourselves up for a costly inflight failure.

One guy told me 'if the radios work on the ground, the fan's fine,' but I pulled the logs on a Citation that needed a $15,000 LRU swap after a fan seized and cooked the box during cruise last year, so what's the right call here?

3 comments

3 Comments

martinez.diana17d ago

Buddy of mine had a similar mindset, skipped the fan check for months. Then his nav screen went dark over the mountains. Cost him way more than the time the checks would have taken.

elizabeth43817d ago

Always check the cooling fan, it's cheaper than a new nav unit.

ericschmidt1d ago

Wait, is the fan really the main issue here? @martinez.diana, that story sounds like a classic overheating problem, but a dark nav screen could also be a bad power connection or a failing unit itself. I've seen cases where people replace the fan and the screen still goes out because the real fault was somewhere else in the wiring. Always good to check the simple stuff first, though.