Little victory fixing a stubborn DME on a CRJ-200 in Denver

Spent three days chasing an intermittent DME fault on a 200-series CRJ, swapping antennas and cables with zero luck. Turned out a tiny chafed wire in the rack connector was grounding out only when the plane hit certain vibrations. Anyone else spent way too long on a problem that had such a simple fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_wilson787d ago

You ever had one of those where you're pulling your hair out for days? I had a similar thing on a King Air once, chasing a VOR that would just drop out on the left side. Turned out it was a pinched wire in the connector behind the panel that only shorted when we hit a bumpy patch. I'd swapped the whole nav unit, checked antennas, even replaced the coax. Finally found it by just wiggling the harness while the system was on, and it popped back. Felt like a dummy but hey, that's aviation, right?

noah_black7d ago

Damn, wiggling harnesses is basically aircraft acupuncture.