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Figured out a trick for tracing intermittent shorts in older King radios
Spent three days chasing a ghost short in a King KX 170B last week. The thing would work fine on the bench then act up after a heat cycle. I tried all the usual stuff like wiggling wires and checking pins with a meter. Finally I grabbed a can of freeze spray and a heat gun and started isolating sections. Found out the problem was a cracked solder joint on a transistor that only opened up when the radio got warm. Hit it with freeze spray right on that spot and the radio came back to life every time. Been using that thermal cycling trick on old analog gear for about 6 months now and it never fails. Anyone else got a go-to method for finding those weird intermittent faults?
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kimreed15d ago
That thermal cycling trick is genius, it's basically the same thing as when my car's bluetooth only cuts out at a specific spot on the highway. The vibration plus the heat from the dash makes a connection go bad, but only under those conditions. It's like our brains do the same thing, you know? A problem only shows up when you're tired or stressed, but you can't figure it out on a good day. The real trick is learning to recreate the exact conditions that break the thing, whether it's a radio or your own patience.
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williamhill15d ago
@kimreed That part about recreating the exact conditions really hit home for me. It's like you said, a problem only shows up when you're tired or stressed, and I've been down that road more times than I can count. With that King radio, I must have had it on the bench for two days doing the same old tests before I remembered the heat gun trick. It's funny how our brains work the same way, you know? Like how you can stare at a schematic for hours and miss something obvious, then come back after coffee and spot it in five seconds. The thermal cycling thing works because it forces the fault to show itself under controlled conditions, kind of like how you gotta replicate that exact highway spot to diagnose a car's Bluetooth issue.
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