The borescope I swore was a gimmick saved my butt on a PT6 hot section inspection last fall

I thought they were just a fancy toy for the younger guys until I caught a cracked turbine blade on a King Air that would have been invisible with just a mirror and flashlight. Any of you old-timers had a tool you were dead wrong about?

3 comments

3 Comments

leo_black761mo ago

You ever watch a buddy drop a brand new one on day one?

ward.jamie1mo ago

Hold your horses there, cowboy. I still think those things are mostly overpriced toys that break the first time you drop them. You got lucky with that King Air blade, but for every cracked blade you catch with one, I've seen three guys waste an hour trying to get the stupid camera to focus on a speck of dirt. A good mirror and a bright flashlight have been finding cracks for fifty years without a battery that dies or a screen that fogs up. Plus, half the time the younger guys spend more time fumbling with the app on their phone than actually looking at the part. You can keep your fancy digital peep show.

caseythompson1mo ago

@ward.jamie, you're not wrong about the younger guys getting lost in the app. We had a kid last month spend ten minutes trying to pair his phone to the borescope while the rest of us just laid an inspection mirror flat on the hangar floor and saw the crack in the leading edge right away. The battery thing is real too, on a cold morning that screen just goes dim and you're stuck holding a brick. But I still say the real problem is half these "digital tools" are made for hobbyists, not guys working on turbines all day, and nobody wants to admit it.