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by wumbernang 4026 days ago
Ah yes my favourite people.

So our radios and avionics go out with a test set. The wrench monkeys install it in the airframe and it doesn't work (the term used by the guy on the phone). So we say take the thing out of the airframe, plug it into the test set and run the test cases. We get a call back saying it doesn't work and can we come out.

So I haul my arse up to the other end of the country by plane and arrive at the facility. What do I find?

They haven't used the test set (because it didn't work), opened the avionics unit and piddled with the power supply and managed to blow up both the test set and the GPS. This is blamed on a design fault on our part.

So I get the units shipped back and we post mortem it and find that they were using the wrong harness. The one we get bak is from a completely different unit and serial.

Design revision: Support 200v AC on the DC-DC converter input that expects 48v DC

This was my life for three years.

That's also why so much cash gets pissed out of the window in the defense sector...

1 comments

Design revision: Support 200v AC on the DC-DC converter input that expects 48v DC

To be fair, if you made a change like that and didn't change the harness to make it physically incompatible, that's not the user's fault. It might not be your fault either, but it most assuredly is somebody's fault.

Well it's always someone's fault.

In this case there are only so many combinations of MIL-DTL-22992 out there.

It wasn't even our harness. No idea where it came from. Serno didn't register, wasn't shipped with the device and wasn't approved (I know as I wrote the asset tracking software).

I still reckon they lost the official harness, rigged this one up and FUBARed it but the moment you point a finger, the professional cockroaches scurry away.