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Chasing a phantom vibration on a Cessna 172 took me 11 hours
Last Tuesday I had a Skyhawk come in with a weird vibration in the yoke during cruise. I spent a good 6 hours checking the engine mounts, prop balance, and control cables, nothing obvious. Finally I decided to pull the cowling off again and actually ran my hand along every single hose clamp. Found a loose #10 clamp on the alternator bracket that was barely touching the firewall at certain RPMs. Tightened it in 2 minutes and the vibration was gone. Has anyone else spent way too many hours tracking down something this dumb?
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iris5741mo ago
Man, that's rough. I had a similar thing on a Cessna 150 where I spent like 5 hours chasing a weird noise that turned out to be a loose screw in the headset jack panel. @jesser79 is right, it's amazing how much time you can waste on something so small.
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johnson.daniel1mo ago
Whoa, hold up. I gotta respectfully disagree here. I don't think it's wasted time at all. Those little noises and quirks are what teach you the most about an airplane, and you only really learn them by putting in the hours. Whenever I've spent forever on a simple issue like a loose screw, I never forget that sound or that fix. It sucks in the moment, but it builds a kind of gut-level knowledge you can't get from a manual. So yeah, it feels dumb, but I think it's actually part of the deal.
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