Overheard a younger tech say "patch panels are for old guys" and I had to bite my tongue

I was over at a hangar last Thursday waiting on a part and heard this fresh kid telling his buddy that patch panels are just extra work for boomers. He was all about running everything through a digital bus. I get that new tech is cool but I've seen what happens when a single databus fault takes down your whole avionics suite. A patch panel lets you isolate a bad LRU in 10 minutes flat without pulling half the rack. That kid probably hasn't had to troubleshoot on an overnight in a freezing hangar yet. He'll learn the hard way when his fancy bus goes dark and he's chasing a ghost through a wiring diagram. Any of you older guys seen young techs dismiss solid practices like that? How do you handle it without sounding like a dinosaur?

2 comments

2 Comments

wade2505d ago

Busses and buses are different things, just saying.

val_bailey665d ago

Did you catch that the kid was talking about a databus or a completely different kind of bus? Because databus faults can strand you just as bad as any broken copper patch cable when you're out on the line. Either way, he'll learn real quick that old school methods exist for a reason when something decides to quit working at 2am.