The time a bird's nest caused a full comms failure on a Cessna 172

I was doing a pre-flight check on a private Cessna 172 in Phoenix last spring. The pilot reported intermittent radio static. I started tracing the antenna lines, and everything looked fine inside the panel. I finally popped the inspection plate on the top of the fuselage, right at the base of the main VHF antenna. Instead of a clean connection, I found a perfectly woven little bird's nest, complete with three tiny eggs, tucked right up in there. The mama bird had used shredded coax shielding as part of her construction materials. My boss just stared at it and said, 'Well, I guess we found the source of your signal degradation.' We carefully relocated the nest to a nearby tree, cleaned out all the debris, and resealed the area. The radios came back crystal clear. Has anyone else had wildlife cause a fault that was way more creative than you expected?

3 comments

3 Comments

xena_brown5022d ago

Was it really a full failure or just some static? Seems a bit dramatic.

thomas27522d ago

Yeah, calling it "just some static" is exactly what I would have said a month ago. But @xena_brown50, I saw the whole thing go down live and it was way more than that. The entire feed cut out for like ten minutes during the key part. It wasn't a little noise, it was a complete blackout. That changed my mind on how bad it was. They totally dropped the ball on the broadcast.

alicew6816d ago

Full failure" reminds me of when our local weather radar just showed a spinning circle for an hour.