The day the DME went haywire over Bakersfield and I nearly lost my cool

Flying back from a quick install job in Visalia last Thursday, we had a DME unit start throwing garbage distances. Pilot looks over and asks if I can see it. I pulled the logs and saw intermittent data spikes for about 14 minutes. We landed, I traced it to a bad antenna cable connector, one of those BNC ends that looked fine but had corrosion inside. Swapped it and ran a full check, took maybe 45 minutes total. But the weird part was the whole week before, I'd had three small jobs go sideways. This one actually went smooth once I found the issue. Has anyone else had corrosion hide that well inside a connector that looked clean from the outside? What do you use to clean those before you condemn the cable?

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faithf779d ago

Ugh, those hidden corrosion gremlins are the worst, you do everything right and still get burned. I usually hit the pins with a little contact cleaner and a Q-tip before I trust any connector that's been sitting outside.

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