That time my ground school instructor said to trust the 'click' and I almost fried a $2,000 unit

Back in 2019 at a shop near Wichita, my instructor kept telling me, "if the connector clicks, it's seated, don't force it." So I'm installing a new nav unit in a King Air, get that nice click, and move on. Two weeks later the pilot reports intermittent display issues. Turns out the connector wasn't fully locked, just clicked on the first detent, and vibration worked it loose. Cost the shop $180 in bench testing before we found it, plus a lot of red faces. Anyone else ever had a 'click' that turned out to be a lie? Should I start tug-testing every connector now, even on clean installs?

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1 Comment

schmidt.grace24d ago

Tug test everything, even new gear. Clicks lie sometimes.