Shoutout to the $300 thermal camera I bought for my phone

I was chasing a weird voltage drop in a nav system on a King Air for like three days. Couldn't find a bad connection anywhere. Grabbed my new thermal cam on a whim and scanned the whole harness. One connector block was running 15 degrees hotter than the rest, right where the main power feed goes in. Found a tiny bit of corrosion on a pin you couldn't even see. Cost about $300, but it saved me probably eight hours of head scratching. Anyone else use these little thermal imagers for quick fault finding?

4 comments

4 Comments

matthew_west1mo ago

My FLIR One found a bad voltage regulator on a Cessna 172 last month that was just warm to the touch. @the_max is right about it becoming basic gear, it turns a full day job into a ten minute walk around. That quick payback makes the cost easy to swallow.

abbyhall5d ago

I was one of those people who rolled their eyes at thermal cameras. Thought they were a gimmick for guys with more money than sense. Then my buddy brought his to look at a breaker panel that kept tripping. Pointed it at the box and there was a single wire glowing like a Christmas tree. Five minutes of work fixed something I would have spent hours chasing with a multimeter. That changed my mind fast. So yeah, I get it now. The time it saves is real.

the_max1mo ago

I read a piece in a trade magazine last year about how thermal imaging is becoming a basic tool for avionics. The article said even a cheap unit can spot problems you would never see, like that exact kind of hidden corrosion heating up a pin. It makes total sense to me that it found your issue fast. Those hours you saved probably paid for the camera right there. What model did you end up going with?

kevinallen1mo ago

Man, I feel like a caveman who just discovered fire. I've been tracing wires with my fingers for years, getting that "just warm" feeling and guessing. The idea that I could have just looked at a screen the whole time is kind of embarrassing. It's one of those tools that makes you realize how much time you've wasted doing things the hard way.