That week I swapped 6 faulty Garmin screens in a row on a single Cessna

Last month I had a run of bad luck that I still can't believe. I was working on a 2018 Cessna 172, and over the span of 5 days I pulled and replaced 6 Garmin GDU 1050 screens. Every single one either had a dead pixel or wouldn't boot up after install. Turned out the interconnect harness had a bad ground that was frying the boards. Anyone else ever had a batch of bad avionics straight from the box? How did you track down the real issue?

2 comments

2 Comments

river_allen21d ago

Man, that's a rough week. Who needs a flight simulator when you've got a real-life lottery of dead pixels going on, right? I bet you felt like an avionics archaeologist digging through the trash pile. Good on you for tracking it down though, most folks would've just blamed the screens and moved on. Nothing like a bad ground to turn a simple swap into a full-blown investigation.

king.robin21d ago

Six faulty Garmin screens in a row" makes me want to throw my toolbox across the hangar just hearing about it. That's not just bad luck, that's the universe actively messing with you. Seriously impressed you stuck with it long enough to find the bad ground, I would have lost my mind by screen number three.