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Shoutout to the $300 thermal camera I bought for my phone
I was chasing a weird voltage drop in a nav system on a King Air for like three days. Couldn't find a bad connection anywhere. Grabbed my new thermal cam on a whim and scanned the whole harness. One connector block was running 15 degrees hotter than the rest, right where the main power feed goes in. Found a tiny bit of corrosion on a pin you couldn't even see. Cost about $300, but it saved me probably eight hours of head scratching. Anyone else use these little thermal imagers for quick fault finding?
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matthew_west6mo ago
My FLIR One found a bad voltage regulator on a Cessna 172 last month that was just warm to the touch. @the_max is right about it becoming basic gear, it turns a full day job into a ten minute walk around. That quick payback makes the cost easy to swallow.
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abbyhall5mo ago
I was one of those people who rolled their eyes at thermal cameras. Thought they were a gimmick for guys with more money than sense. Then my buddy brought his to look at a breaker panel that kept tripping. Pointed it at the box and there was a single wire glowing like a Christmas tree. Five minutes of work fixed something I would have spent hours chasing with a multimeter. That changed my mind fast. So yeah, I get it now. The time it saves is real.
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the_max6mo ago
I read a piece in a trade magazine last year about how thermal imaging is becoming a basic tool for avionics. The article said even a cheap unit can spot problems you would never see, like that exact kind of hidden corrosion heating up a pin. It makes total sense to me that it found your issue fast. Those hours you saved probably paid for the camera right there. What model did you end up going with?
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kevinallen6mo ago
Man, I feel like a caveman who just discovered fire. I've been tracing wires with my fingers for years, getting that "just warm" feeling and guessing. The idea that I could have just looked at a screen the whole time is kind of embarrassing. It's one of those tools that makes you realize how much time you've wasted doing things the hard way.
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