Tripped a circuit breaker on a CRJ900 last Thursday

I was doing a routine avionics check on a CRJ900 at O'Hare. Plugged in a portable GPU tester and popped the main breaker on the external power cart. Took me 20 minutes to trace the short back to a frayed wire under the GPU connector. Anyone else run into weird power cart issues on the ramp?

3 comments

3 Comments

piper_burns1mo ago

Bet the frayed wire was from cart vibration during taxi.

ben_nguyen1mo ago

Wait, was this at the K9 spot on the south side ramp? I swear I’ve seen that same frayed wire on three different carts this month. My own goof was last week when I plugged in a tester and the whole cart started smoking. Took me 15 minutes to realize I had the damn thing backwards. Haven’t touched a GPU without double-checking the pins ever since, but hey, beats getting zapped.

miamitchell1mo ago

Is that the same cart with the loose ground strap or was that a different one? I swear I saw @piper_burns working on that exact spot last Tuesday and he mentioned the frayed wire too. I accidentally fried my own multimeter probes on a cart that had a shorted diode, so I feel your pain on the backwards plug thing.