...and here's the thing nobody talks about, the thermal paste isn't just for heat transfer. It's also a gap filler. Those factory pads look fine on the surface but they compress and harden over time, especially in a vibrating bird like a King Air. I've seen intermittent issues in radar units and even a comm transceiver that traced back to micro gaps between the chip and the heat sink. Vibrations make those tiny air pockets shift around, so you get a temp spike only when the plane hits certain frequencies. Frank saved you a world of pain, that red face is nothing compared to pulling a whole panel to chase a phantom that was just a pencil-thin void the whole time.

Raw chicken twice means he deserved worse.

Whoa, that's wild. I had a similar thing happen with a $15 digital caliper from Amazon. It read within a thousandth of my Mitutoyo, which cost me like 150 bucks. I was mad about it for a week, ngl. Kept the cheap one in my garage and the expensive one got demoted to the drawer.