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Took me 4 hours to find a broken ground wire on a simple Cessna 172
Last Tuesday I was troubleshooting a COM radio that would cut out during engine runup. I started checking all the usual stuff, power connections, antenna coax, even swapped the radio with a known good unit. After 4 hours of head scratching I finally noticed the ground strap on the engine mount was corroded almost through. Has anyone else spent way too long on something that should have been obvious?
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the_riley3mo ago
Did you check the coax connections first? I found that swapping the antenna lead with one from another plane saved me a lot of time on a similar gremlin hunt. Sometimes starting with the simplest stuff like grounds saves hours of frustration.
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sam_cooper3mo ago
Yeah honestly I used to be the kind of person who would tear apart the whole system before checking the simple stuff. But after burning a whole weekend chasing a radio issue that turned out to be a loose ground strap on the firewall I learned my lesson. @the_riley you're totally right that swapping cables is a quick way to rule out the easiest things. I mean it feels dumb to spend an hour on swapping coax when you're sure it's something deeper but it's way better than pulling panels for no reason.
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ward.diana3mo ago
Learned that one on a 172 with a bad antenna ground.
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