Spent 5 hours chasing a problem that turned out to be a bad backshell

On a Cessna 208 in Phoenix last Friday, I had a compass error that kept coming back after every alignment. It took me until hour four to realize the backshell on the connector was cross-threaded, messing up the ground path. Anybody else waste a whole shift on something this simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

reed.ray28d ago

Man, that stuff is the worst. I got a buddy who works on Citations out in Wichita and he spent a whole Saturday chasing a ghost in the autopilot. It was constantly dropping out on approach. He checked all the servos, the computer, even swapped the attitude module. Finally, after seven hours, he found a screw was just a little too long and was grounding out a wire in the connector. He still brings it up every time I see him, just like @kim_sanchez19 mentioned with the bent pin. It's always the little stuff that eats up your whole day.

kim_sanchez1928d ago

Oh man, that's brutal! A buddy of mine had almost the same thing happen on a King Air out in Tucson. He was pulling his hair out for a whole afternoon over a compass error that just wouldn't clear. Turns out the ground pin in the backshell was actually bent and barely touching the connector body. He felt like a total idiot when he finally spotted it with a magnifying glass and a flashlight.