Can we talk about people using the wrong wire strippers on shielded cable?

I was on a job last week at a small hangar in Boise, fixing an intermittent fault on a King KX 155 nav radio. The previous guy had used standard wire strippers on the coax, which crushed the dielectric and left little nicks in the center conductor. That caused a short that took me 45 minutes to trace with a multimeter. I swear, just buy a proper coax stripper for $30 and save yourself the headache. Has anyone else run into this kind of sloppy work on older GA planes?

3 comments

3 Comments

grantmartinez13d ago

Four bucks at Harbor Freight gets you a coax stripper that does the same thing lol.

cole99413d ago

I get what you're saying about saving money, but I've had those cheap strippers slip and nick the copper on me before.

sean_torres7113d ago

Yo @grantmartinez you ever had that happen to you or just me?