Tried to flash a radar altimeter in a Cessna 172 and cooked the whole LRU instead

I was on the ramp at KPDX last Thursday, hooked up my laptop to update the software on a backup altimeter, and next thing I know the unit is smoking and the pilot is screaming at me from the window. Had to spend the rest of the day filling out paperwork and explaining to my lead how I swapped the data bus pins by accident. Anyone else ever nuke a $4,000 box because of a wiring oops?

2 comments

2 Comments

victorhill13h ago

Man that's rough, buddy. Nothing worse than watching smoke roll out of a box you just touched. I swear, avionics are like gremlins sometimes, one wrong pin and they just self destruct. Had a buddy do something similar on a King Air, swapped a ground wire and fried the whole autopilot computer. He still gets crap about it at hangar parties years later. Hope the paperwork didn't take too long, those repair forms are a beast.

wendyk5610h ago

That 172 altimeter was probably a Garmin GEA 71 actually, not a radar altimeter (those are usually on bigger jets). Easy mistake though, given how many boxes look the same in the panel. Hope the lead went easy on you, man.