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Unpopular opinion: swapping pin 2 and pin 5 on a D-sub didn't save me time, it cost me 4 hours
I used to always swap pin 2 and pin 5 on a D-sub connector to make wiring look cleaner in tight panels. Thought I was being clever until last Tuesday during a line maintenance check on a King Air in Boise. The radios wouldn't even power up after reconnection. Turns out my shortcut fixed nothing and just introduced intermittent shorts that wasted hours of troubleshooting with a multimeter. Now I just follow the damn wiring diagram every time and label each pin before I crimp. Has anyone else learned this lesson the hard way with a specific aircraft?
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alicemurphy1mo ago
Yeah, did the exact same thing on a 172 in Bellingham and chased a ground fault for three hours.
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kai_webb911mo ago
Three hours for a ground fault? Man, that's rough. I've had days like that where every check just leads to another dead end (and a lot of head scratching).
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brianreed1mo ago
That dead end feeling is the worst, especially after three hours of it.
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