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Old 9th Nov 2013, 19:21
  #2154 (permalink)  
Dave Ed
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Cyprus
Age: 65
Posts: 297
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BJZS

TTO,

ZS was a one off buy from ??? that needed full North Sea mods and as I mentioned many posts ago the 212 mods really got out of hand ....there were hundreds of them!!!.
It was a tight schedule as per normal and we had about 16+ avionic engineers working 24/7 including night shifts.
On the evening/night shift prior to first flight I had listed 135 items we needed to finish off, there were loads of us...........takeaways were ordered. Unbelievably by the early hours of the first flight day we were actually getting there. Then disaster.
The battery was connected to enable functional checks however the battery bus panel down by the pilot's feet was not secured yet.
The battery circuit breakers made contact with the airframe and the battery bus feeder wires started to discharge the battery. Within seconds the wires went into melt down. The avionic staff were having a well earned break at the time. Seeing smoke pouring from the center console a sheety jettisoned a fire extinguisher into the fire zone.....what a mess!!
Every wire that the two battery bus feeders wires had touched was also damaged and needed to be replaced and as Bell wiring under the console was generally one big tangled twisted mass that was a lot of wires.

That is why the battery bus panels are now hinged at the bottom.

After working sooooo many hours that night I then had to break the news to Jean Dennel...............He took it remarkably well starting his response with.................."I had a dream.................!!!!!!"
Dave Ed is offline