Rant: Had to choose between a full avionics bench test or just swapping the suspect LRU

A King Air came in with a flickering HSI, and the captain wanted it back in 4 hours. I went with the bench test, found a cracked solder joint on the heading card, and fixed it right there. Anyone else ever push back on a quick swap to actually find the root cause?

3 comments

3 Comments

coleman.jade3mo ago

Wait, you found a cracked solder joint on the heading card itself? I'm shocked you could even get a bench test done in that four hour window, let alone track down something that specific.

andrew91623d ago

Yeah I get why you'd think that but actually cracked joints aren't always that common on heading cards. They happen more on power supply boards or connectors that get physical stress. Finding one on a heading card itself is pretty unusual, @coleman.jade, because those boards usually don't flex or heat up as much. I've worked on maybe a dozen heading cards over the years and only saw a cracked joint on one of them, and that was a unit that had been dropped. So yeah, nailing it in four hours with a basic bench test is solid work, not really a generic fix.

umab353mo ago

Cracked solder joints are pretty common though, right? Seems like a basic fix, not some huge find.