Forum: F-16 News

I concur, and wire chaffing will always be an issue!

Units go through EO, sexual harassment, and alcohol/drug awareness briefings probably at least a couple of times a year. They should add a "wire harness awareness" briefing somewhere in there. I always had a hard time with people saying, "it's only a wire." Only a wire can cost the American tax payers millions of dollars when it shorts out intermittently. It's funny how those shorts will make some techs replace expensive boxes and components when a 50 cent splice kit would solve the problem.

Just remebered chaffing awareness during annual MX-O training. So there is a program in place, problem is most people don't care

I've seen some instances where it would've been less expensive and require less maintenance hours if an aircraft made a hard landing than to play the troubleshooting game with a intermittent wire short/open. Wires are always overlooked and their associated problems underrated. Even engineers seem to forget basic wire stuff. When they installed the AAR-57 CMWS in Apaches, engineers forgot to add a simple drip loop to the bulkhead disconnects, so water started collecting in the connectors. Every time it rained in Iraq (which isn't much), several aircraft had all kinds of CMWS faults. To make matters worse, even in the desert the crew chiefs had to do a fresh water rinse every 14 days. The Army's fix was to have the troops splice in extra wire segments. It would not have been a big deal, but just about all the wires were shielded. I'm sure a lot of you guys know, shielded wire is a pain to splice. If it was 6ft from termination point to termination point I would just run new wire. Shield splice kits are just too precious a commodity to just throw around.

Army maintenance sounds a lot different than AF. We take wiring issues pretty seriously. Aircraft are rutinely removed from flight status if wires are even suspected. Engineers can't think of everything and make mistakes just like everyone else. This is part of the reason we have TCTOs. In the case of the drip loop you're talking about, it was probably more cost effective to splice the wires than to run a whole new harness that probably spidered all over the aircraft. Shielded harnesses can be a pain in the a$$ in tight spaces, but I don't think they are all that hard if you have room. Also that is one of those uncommon wiring jobs that a lot of specs have never done, or haven't done in a long time. It's all about passing on good maintenance practices to the new guys and punishing those that refuse to be safe and follow tech data. The AF does what it can to mitigate problems like this through FTDs and annual training but that is all they can really do. It is up to the NCOs, in my opinion, to change the attitude on the flight line. If you don't like the way your subbordinate's doing something, teach him the right way to do it, and if he/she refuses to do it the right way....well, there's avenues for that as well.

We have training classes we go through after getting to the flight line called FTDs (field training detachment) which is like tech school but a little more in depth.