Had a talk with an old timer that flipped my view on testing harnesses

I was wiring up a new 737NG harness last Tuesday and this guy named Frank, been doing avionics since the 80s, came over and watched me for a minute. He pointed out I was doing my continuity checks in the same order every time, just going left to right on the connector. He said that's how you miss intermittent stuff because your brain gets in a rhythm and stops actually listening. I started mixing up the order, hitting different pins first, and sure enough I caught a cold solder joint on pin 23 that would have passed a normal test. Never thought about how muscle memory could mess with signal checking like that. Has anyone else run into habits like this that actually hurt your work instead of helping?

2 comments

2 Comments

vera30818d ago

Hasn't this happened to everyone at some point though? It's so easy to get into a groove and stop actually paying attention... your brain just goes on autopilot. I had a similar thing years ago with crimping, kept doing the same hand motion and missed a loose crimp because I wasn't really feeling it anymore. That Frank sounds like a smart guy. I bet he's caught more than a few things that way over the years.

simon_coleman18d ago

Yeah Frank's definitely been around the block. I used to think experience just meant you got faster but this made me realize it's more about knowing where your attention slips.