I finally fixed a bad GPS antenna issue that had me stumped for 2 days

Honestly, I was troubleshooting a King Air G1000 that kept losing satellite lock. Turned out the antenna coax had a tiny nick near the base, took me 8 hours across two shifts to finally find it with a TDR. Anyone else ever spend way too long chasing a simple cable problem?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby45029d ago

Took a solid shift once tracking down a bad coax on a 737 wing antenna. Turned out the connector pin was bent by like a millimeter. Spent 6 hours with a multimeter and a spectrum analyzer before finally seeing it under a magnifying glass. Felt like a total idiot when I found it.

danielr9428d ago

and honestly the thing nobody ever talks about with these gps coax issues is how much of a pain it is when the damage is under a fairing or panel you already checked twice. like with that king air you could have the tdr reading fine at the connectors but the nick is hidden behind a zip tie or a clamp that grounds out the shield just enough to mess with the signal. i spent a whole day on a citation once because water got inside the coax where it passed through a bulkhead fitting and it only showed up on a vswr test at specific frequencies. the multimeter looked fine because it was just a tiny bit of moisture trapped under the dielectric.