Smoke Check Stories

J

JSpecGC8

New Member
Ok I know some of us are super lucky and some of us are not, post your best or funniest smoke checked electronics story.

The worst thing that ever happened to me was a wire running through the wing of a jet catching on fire and destroying a complete harness during routine maintenance.


I laughed for hours but supervision was pissed off, luckily for me it was not my fault but it was funny! (Side Note: I was pissin bullets when it happened because catching a 20 million dollar jet on fire is never a good thing)

Our recent Mobo fire thread got me to thinking about this!!
 
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My funniest smoke checked story was when i was installing a new power supply for my uncle. I had accidentally removed a screw that connected the PSU, so it was a little wiggly. I tried to fit in the cable into the PSU and that's when it happened. The entire back of my case lit up in an overwhleming flashof light. In fact, it was so surprisingly painful that I sometimes find myself feeling sorry when I use a flashbang in Counter Strike. Anyway, the power supply was literally on fire. I tried to put away the flames with water but all it did was make sparks fly out. I was the only one in the house, so out of panic, I threw the flaming power supply out the window. I live on the sixth floor.

Yeah. When it hit the ground it made a loud CRRRRRRRK noise, I looked out the window and the fire had miraculously dissapeared. You could see the sparks though. True story.
 
I recall one (of many) spectacular episodes from my military life--

One of my partners was running up a cockpit heads up display on the test bench and couldn't figure out why it wasn't turning on. He asked me to help him figure out what the problem was (because he knew it should at least turn on) and I pointed out that one of the switches on the test bench was in the wrong position (the "display enable" switch, of all things).

Unbeknownst to us (but knownst to others... I love saying that), our Division Officer walked in (think big boss) and was standing right behind us with our Branch Chief when my friend turned on that switch.

This thick cloud of acrid yellow smoke started pouring out of the back of the display from the low voltage power supply (well, we knew what the problem was, at least) and he couldn't move fast enough to pull power from the bench...
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I was laughing my butt off until I turned around and saw all the "brass" behind me. :eek:

Luckily, our DivO had a sense of humor. :rolleyes:
 
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