flightlogic

flightlogic

Well Known Member
Patron
When you mount those old round instruments you use a brass nut that has little legs. We always called them spiders. When one of them falls behind the panel, and you forget to remind yourself to go chase it down. (on your back... legs out the slider, flashlight in mouth... readers on your nose... you get the picture)
Eventually Murphy will place that little brass spider across the hot buss and ground. It then becomes a fusible link. When it happened to me this week, it sizzled, crackled, made smoke and generally got my heart rate up significantly. When I "misplaced" it last Saturday.... I meant to look for it. Leaking brakes, nose shimmy, dead compressor, backwards brake pucks... all lead to distractions and a senior moment on my part. Well, the fusible link melted most of the spider and I eventually found it above the breakers. Could have been worse. So, a little holiday reminder to all.... if you lose one.... FIND it. Cheers, Nick
 
Last edited:
I always use a single loop of lacing cord to tie them in place, much easier than hunting them down later :cool:

PS: they are called instrument nuts
 
I like the lacing cord idea. I have a roll of white.... seems like waxed dental floss. Is the black that looks like heavy thread a better bet???
 
No smoke, but how about a 1/8" long single strand of 22 gage wire bridging two pins of a 25-pin D-sub connector to cause days of frustrating troubleshooting?! :confused: That happened to me a while ago trying to locate the source of an intermittent erroneous reading on my engine monitor that only occurred during flight. Went through typical troubleshooting sequence. You can imagine my surprise when I found the source of my malady! Remove connector, blow, reseat connector, could not duplicate.:)

Jerry Esquenazi
RV-8 N84JE
 
You must log in or register to reply here.