Vent: Old timer at the hangar in Tucson said something that stuck with me

I was troubleshooting a weird voltage drop on a King KX 155 nav radio last month at the shop near Tucson International. This guy, Jim, who's been doing avionics since the 80s just walked over and said "stop chasing the wire, chase the pin." Turned out I had a bent pin in the connector, not a broken wire. Has anyone else had a simple tip from a senior tech that saved you a ton of time?

2 comments

2 Comments

jana_hernandez13d agoMost Upvoted

Hold up though, bent pins usually show up as an intermittent problem more than a straight voltage drop.

thompson.robin13d ago

Oh man, you've got a point there! A buddy of mine had a Ryzen build last year where the system would randomly shut down during gaming sessions. He checked voltages and everything looked fine on a cold boot. Turned out one pin was slightly bent and making contact most of the time but occasionally losing connection when things warmed up and expanded. He spent weeks swapping PSUs and motherboards before he noticed the bent pin under a magnifying glass. It was such a pain to diagnose because the voltage would only drop for a split second during those intermittent failures.