I called ADS-B a fad in 2015 and ate my words hard after one ramp check in Wichita

Harper Perry · 2026-09-23T07:45:05.425883+00:00

Back when I was still turning wrenches on King Airs out of a shop near Wichita, I told the younger guys that ADS-B was a government money grab and nobody would ever enforce the 2020 mandate. Then a fed walked the ramp in 2021 and asked to see the install log on a 2008 350, and the owner had flown 60 hours with a dead transponder squawking nothing. That one inspection turned into an $8,500 fix because the shop had to rip out the old wiring harness and redo the antenna bond on a cold hangar floor. I still think the mandate rollout was a mess, but I was flat wrong calling the tech useless, the traffic picture in the cockpit is night and day better. Any of you still dealing with installs that got pencil whipped by some other shop?

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I called ADS-B a fad in 2015 and ate my words hard after one ramp check in Wichita | Avionics Technicians - Rigidtalk