Avionics News April 2022 - 57

transponder didn't work, and ATC had me make identification turns before I could
hear the magic words " radar contact. "
Arriving back at the airplane's base, I pulled the mixture control to shut down the
engine and ... nothing happened. I should have just turned off the fuel but used the mag
switch instead. I found out later that the shop had somehow broken off the spiked-ball
transponder antenna and hadn't secured the mixture cable at the carburetor. It wasn't
clear why the mixture cable had been disconnected in the first place.
Fun times. But things got better.
A few years later, I picked up an airplane from an avionics shop after an upgrade.
This involved a friend's Cessna 172 and - dating myself a bit here - a Northstar
Avionics M1 Loran navigator, plus a BendixKing KX-155 nav/comm. I was wellversed
in how the KX-155 worked, but the M1 was an intimidating mystery. The
shop manager showed me how to enter an identifier and what pressing the big " D "
button did, and off I went. I flew that airplane a lot after the upgrades, but never
entered a flight plan, always going direct.
Even more years later, my own airplane was coming out of the avionics shop,
sporting a brand-new Garmin 530. The situation was almost a cliché: I had a firm
deadline for an upcoming business trip and needed the airplane and its upgrades
ready to rock on a certain day. The shop humored me, and I picked up the airplane
" Avionics and
maintenance shops
can't save pilots
from themselves.
They can't fix it when
someone decides
they know best. But
they can adopt the
kinds of policies -
best practices or
standard operating
procedures -
designed to minimize
the kind of events
I've observed and
described.
ANYONE WHO WORKS ON AIRCRAFT NEEDS TO REMEMBER THAT
PILOTS SOMETIMES NEED A BIG RED FLAG.
one day and launched on a two-week trip the next, across the country and back.
Before I accepted the airplane, the shop manager and I sat in it and walked
through a few operations, only scratching the surface of the 530's capabilities. I
recall that most of what we did involved communications and accessing the data
base. I already knew how to go direct, thanks to the M1, but it was a while before
I learned about flight plans. Fast-forward a couple of years and a buddy asked how
long it took me to learn the 530. " I'm still learning it, " was my honest reply. I still
have the 530, and I still learn new things about it.
The point isn't that pilots need to pay more attention to the airplane when it comes
out of maintenance or inspection. They definitely do. Nor is that they need to study
their avionics' manuals more, even if it's true. It's also not that adequate training
isn't available. It is, both in the classroom and in the cockpit.
Instead, the point is that - and stop me if you've heard this before - maintenance
and avionics shops have a significant role to play when considering their customers'
safety, especially in the time immediately after work has been performed. Personal
experience and the accident record tell us this role isn't always fulfilled. One way to
minimize the odds a customer will have an operational issue with the work a shop
performs is to adopt and adhere to a set of standard procedures - call them best
practices - while working on or delivering aircraft.
Continued on page 64
avionics news * april 2022
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Avionics News April 2022

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