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Serious question, an old lead told me to stop chasing voltage drops with a Fluke and just wiggle the cannon plug first
Was doing a pitot heat squawk on a King Air last Thursday and spent 2 hours chasing a 0.4 volt drop through the left wing harness with my meter. The lead walks over, grabs the cannon plug at the wing root, wiggles it, and the fault clears right there. He said 20 years of this and its the pins 9 times out of 10, not the wire. Now I feel dumb for the hours I burned. Any of you guys have a go-to first check before you even pull out the meter?
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dakota_singh3927d ago
Wiggling a plug is a fine quick test but it can also mask a real problem by moving the wire just enough to make contact again. Pins do fail a lot, sure, but so do chafed wires inside the bundle where you can't see them, and that 0.4 volt drop you measured was real data pointing somewhere. I'd still grab the meter first on anything intermittent, because a wiggle that clears it today can leave you with a no-go on a cold morning when the plane actually needs to fly.
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