Got chewed out by a senior tech for not checking pin continuity first

I was working on a King Air 300 nav antenna swap last Tuesday and just went ahead and crimped new connectors on the coax. The senior tech came over, saw what I did, and said 'you better check that coax for shorts before you button it up.' I pulled out my DMM and found a dead short on the center pin to shield. If I had installed it like that, the nav receiver would have been seeing a bad mismatch. Now I always continuity test every coax before I even think about terminating it. Has anyone else learned a similar lesson the hard way?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugoj8620d agoTop Commenter

Pretty much every coax job I've done has a continuity check built into the workflow now after I wasted a whole afternoon troubleshooting a bad crimp. Saves a ton of headache to just test before you even start with the connector.

price.jake20d ago

Wait, you actually crimp before you check continuity? I always test the cable first, never even thought to do it the other way around... That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Guess I've just been lucky so far, but I'm definitely adding that to my routine now.