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I tried using a cheap thermal camera on a comms box and it showed me something I missed
Last week, I was chasing an intermittent fault on a Garmin G1000 system in a Cessna 172. The autopilot kept dropping out. I had my Fluke meter out and was checking all the usual suspects, but nothing. I remembered I had this little $300 Seek thermal camera I bought online a while back. I figured why not, and just scanned the avionics bay while the system was powered up. One of the LRUs in the back corner was running about 15 degrees Celsius hotter than all the others. Turns out, a bad solder joint on a power supply board was causing a tiny short, heating up just that one spot. I never would have found it without seeing that heat bloom. Has anyone else had a simple tool point them right to a problem like that?
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david_fisher376mo ago
Honestly, that's a smart move. @nelson.michael is right about finding hot spots, but your story shows how it catches stuff before it totally fails. Tbh, a lot of guys would just swap that LRU and call it fixed, but you found the real cause. Makes me wonder what else we're missing by just looking with our eyes.
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