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?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_riley2d 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.

sam_cooper2d 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.

ward.diana2d ago

Learned that one on a 172 with a bad antenna ground.