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Was sure that $18 borescope from Harbor Freight was junk, then it found a scratch inside a 172 spar
Bought one of those cheap USB borescopes a while back mostly as a joke, figured the lens would be garbage and the light would wash everything out. Had a 172 in for annual at our shop near Spokane and the owner kept saying he heard something odd in the wing root area during preflight, nothing showed on the outside. Pulled the inspection panel and couldn't see past the first rib with a mirror, so I taped the little camera to a length of safety wire and fed it back there. Took about 20 minutes of wiggling before I got a clear shot, and sure enough there was a gouge in the spar cap about an inch long, right where a previous repair had been done years ago. Showed the owner the picture on my laptop and he went white, that plane is not flying until we get an engineer to look at it. I still like my real borescope for engine work but for poking around airframe cavities this thing earns its keep. Anyone else using cheap cameras for inspections, and where do you draw the line on trusting what you see on the screen?
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fisher.jessica9h ago
A buddy of mine runs a small shop down in Caldwell and had almost the same thing happen with a cheap camera, except his story ended with him dropping the thing inside a Mooney wing and spending an hour fishing it back out with a magnet. He did find a loose rivet on a rib while it was in there though, so he claims it paid for itself twice. His rule now is the cheap camera is fine for finding stuff, but anything he actually has to make a call on gets verified with the good scope or a mirror before he signs anything off. Screen quality on those little units can lie to you too, glare and poor focus make cracks look like scratches and the other way around. I'd say trust it to tell you where to look, not to tell you what you're seeing.
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