Veteran A&P at the FBO made me question my go/no-go call on a 430W

Last Wednesday I was pulling a GNS 430W out of a Piper Archer for a bench test. The old A&P who's been there since the 80s walked over and said 'you sure that's bad or are you just guessing?' He showed me how he checks the antenna coax and tray ground first before ever pulling the box. Made me realize I've been jumping straight to removing the unit on 3 out of my last 5 430W tickets. Anyone else ever catch yourself replacing gear when the real fix was something simpler?

2 comments

2 Comments

margaret55112d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back hard on this one. I mean sure, checking coax and grounds is good practice, but how many times have you done that dance, found nothing, then still had to pull the box anyway? The old timer's trick works great when it's actually a bad antenna or a loose ground, but those modern 430W units have their own internal issues that no amount of cable wiggling will fix. I've wasted whole afternoons chasing grounds and continuity on units that ended up having cold solder joints inside, and that's time I could have spent just swapping the box and getting the plane back in the air. Plus, the newer shops don't have that luxury of hand holding with customers breathing down your neck for a quick turnaround. The old school ways are fine for the old school problems, but this isn't 1985 anymore and these new boxes are finicky in totally different ways.

sagejackson12d ago

But isn't the whole point of checking the simple stuff first that it saves you when it IS the problem? Sure you might waste an afternoon sometimes, but swapping a box you didn't need to swap is a lot more expensive for the customer if it turns out the antenna was just loose.