PSA: Stop using paper logs for your avionics bench tests

I used to be that guy who kept all my test results on a spiral notebook. Scribbled down voltage readings and waveform notes while working on a King KX 155 nav com at my shop in Phoenix. Then about 3 months ago I had a customer come back complaining about an intermittent glitch in their Garmin G5. I dug through my notebook and the ink was smudged from a coffee spill, totally useless. Now I use a cheap tablet with a spreadsheet app and it saves everything to the cloud automatically. No more losing data or trying to read my own bad handwriting. Has anyone else dealt with a similar issue with paper records getting ruined or lost?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_holly6d ago

Man, that coffee spill story hits way too close to home. I had a whole logbook get soaked in a coolant leak from the shop fridge a few years back, and trying to read those waterlogged pages was like trying to decode ancient hieroglyphs. The smudging alone made half my waveform notes completely worthless. You're spot on about the handwriting thing too, my cursive goes from bad to illegible after about three hours of bench work. The cloud backup is the real lifesaver though, I lost an entire month of calibration data once when my notebook got left on the tailgate in a rainstorm. Now I use a cheap waterproof tablet with a spreadsheet app and it syncs automatically every few minutes, no more frantically trying to remember voltage readings from memory or re-doing tests because my notes turned into a blurry mess.

simonk986d agoProlific Poster

Bro, cloud sync is the way. Paper logs are just accident waiting to happen.

jenny_lane126d ago

A buddy of mine lost his whole logbook when his truck's AC dripped on his passenger seat overnight.