Funny thing happened

[KKroger]

So my M1097R1 developed a "Squeal" very high pitched reed like and for the world sounded like a brake wear indicator squeal... "Brake Squealer" I hunted and hunted for it for 3 days.
My ears are a mess so sounds always seem to come from my right... I could hear it but couldn't nail down where... so I am hunting around under the hood, I knew it was not a brake squealer because it happened while sitting still idling. Well I finally figured out a location near the alternator, and then doing a visual at the bottom of the alternator fan shroud, was a zip tie and the tag end of that tie wrap was against the alternator fan... not sure how it got to that point it was not tied to the shroud but on a bundle of 3 wires in the braided cladding. I relocated the bundle a few inches away from that point and tie wrapped them over there and the noise went away...

 

[Guyfang]

In 2007 or so, I got a call from a CWO buddy of mine. He told me he was having a problem, and needed help. So I went over to his Motor Pool and asked what the deal is. He is standing next to a lady, soon to become his 4th wife, and she looks like she is ready to explode. Chief told me that her car "makes noises". He drove it around and can not hear anything. She blurted out that "HE told me I am making it up!!" So Chief and I hop in the car and go for a ride. There is plenty of cobble stone road in bad condition in Germany. We heard nothing strange. Now I have to admit, Engineer CWO's tend to have hearing problems. It goes with the job. And we both had hearing aids in both ears. Rule #1 is, the Chief is always right. Rule #2, is that when Chief is wrong, refer to rule #1. So we drove back to the Motor Pool and Chief told her, "Babe, your dreaming." She blew up. Just then a contractor friend walked in and she turned around and screeched, "You! Get in my car and drive it! See if it makes funny noises!" And he did. When he came back, he told us there is a "clinking sound" and blew out of town. So we crawled under the car and looked for an hour. A 2 inch piece of the front right suspension spring had broken off, and was in the plastic spring cup. It bounced around and made, "Tink, Tink." So there stood two CWO's, with hats in hand, asking forgiveness. Was not a pretty sight.

 

[LCA078]

Back in the day when I was at Ft Rucker, we were training on goggles flying nights in the dead of winter. After a long night flight, we landed and were one of the last crews buttoning up our TH-67 (Bell Jet Ranger) when I kept hearing a very faint 'tink tink tink' when we would move the blades. It was coming from the tail rotor drive shaft, like it was inside the driveshaft. I only heard it because it was so cold and there was no other noise out there at 2am. My instructor, a seasoned CWO just looked at me like I was nuts because he couldn't hear anything but he went ahead and wrote up the 'fault'. He said he probably lost a lot of hearing after a career of flying so he better trust me as a young punk with good ears.

Sure enough, about a week later I got a call from the maintenance guys asking me to see what they found. The drive shaft had a cracked weld on the inside and a piece of it was plinking around the hollow shaft. They had no idea how long it would have lasted.

Of course today, 30 years later and after a career in aviation, I'm sure I couldn't hear a Blackhawk if it landed on me.

Anyway, this is why I have my signature the way I do.

 

[Guyfang]

WOPA convention.

 

[LCA078]

All hail the WOPA!

 

[Guyfang]

 

[LCA078]

God help the LT or CPT that tries to fight the WOPA. Note I said 'tries'.

Bad ju-ju.

So bad....

 

[KKroger]

I'll tell you the ringing in my ears is so loud I'm surprised you all cant hear it...

 

[LCA078]

I have it too. I even called the VA disability hotline for tinnitus but nobody answered. It just kept ringing.

 

[Guyfang]

The key to curing Tinnitus is to turn on Aardvark Blues internet sender and crank it up!

 

[LCA078]

Ok, getting back on the topic of random noises, I'm glad that KKroger got his squeal figured out. That would drive me bananas too.

I know it's been covered before, but I believe the exhaust heat shields on these things were purposefully designed to make noise. When I first received my M1097A2, it had the typical really annoying sheet-metal buzzing sound when idling. Crawling under my truck when idling in P and chocked, I slowly placed my hand very lightly on the noisy shields and could pinpoint two areas making the noise. One was the heat shield next to the fuel tank as it was lightly touching it. A simple bending cured that one. The second source of noise was from where the two sections of the heat shield connect above the catalytic converter (and no, I didn't realize I had a catalytic converter until I saw it!). Anyway, the way I fixed that second buzzing sound was I cleaned off the heat shield joint above the converter and stuck a large glob of RTV silicon on it, smearing it into the joint. Let it cure for a day and the sheet metal buzzing was gone.

 

[Thunderbirds]

Just to take the thread off topic again, when I was still flying as a crew chief in the Army on UH-60 A Blackhawks in the early 90s, we had a crusty old CW5 as our test pilot. One day he thought himself to be a smart one and gave us a writeup on our maintenance log similar to this:

"Clinking noise under pilot's seat, sounds like a little guy with a little hammer." on a diagonal red /

I was still too new, but after a few days of looking under the seat and finding nothing, our most experienced E-6 signed it off as:

"Took away the little hammer from the little guy. Test ok."

Never heard of it again...

 

[LCA078]

and to keep it off topic a bit longer.....

My first job in the military was as an avionics/navigation radio repair tech working in the back shops. The hangar techs (the spark-chasers) would troubleshoot the radio on the aircraft first, and if it was verified bad, they would pull it and send it to us with the fault written up on a tag. Being the new guy fresh out of tech school, our platoon leader, an older CW2, said they would give me an easy one to fix to get used to the flow. Sure enough, a couple hours into the day, here comes a spark-chaser holding an IFF (Identify Friend/Foe) communication radio with a red-tag saying "Radio only works in Identify mode but not Observe mode". Since I was only trained on navigation radios and never touched a communication radio nor heard of that type of issue, I first said no but the Chief said to go ahead and try fixing it. I say 'Roger, Sir' and start pulling the TMs off the shelf to figure out the why the radio only worked when the switch was in IFF mode and not OFF mode.

After about 30 mins of looking in the manuals, I finally got it and the entire room started laughing.

F'ers.....

 

[Guyfang]

In the early 70's, I went to a Hawk ADA Battery, on the East -West border in Germany. 24/7, 365 days a year, we were monitoring are friends in the east, the old DDR boys. The basic Hawk system was a very harsh mistress. The radar techs had a sign above the door. "No radar is ever fixed. Its broke, or getting fixed. But its never fixed!" They had a hard life. When ever a new Second LT would join us, they would of course think of themself as also, "Radar techs" after a few weeks schooling in Ft. Bliss, Texas. They would constantly "Knob Dick" the radars, to "fine tune" them. When ever the Master Sargent in charge of the radar section had enough, they would hold a formation and invite the offending young Lt. There we would present him or her with a "BFS" screwdriver very much like the one depicted below. He would be instructed to adjust anything his new "Electron Screwdriver" would fit. Most took it well. But not all. The famous "BFS" was handed down from one Lt to another.

 

[LCA078]

That thing looks like a golf club!

 

[KKroger]

Ok, getting back on the topic of random noises, I'm glad that KKroger got his squeal figured out. That would drive me bananas too.

I know it's been covered before, but I believe the exhaust heat shields on these things were purposefully designed to make noise. When I first received my M1097A2, it had the typical really annoying sheet-metal buzzing sound when idling. Crawling under my truck when idling in P and chocked, I slowly placed my hand very lightly on the noisy shields and could pinpoint two areas making the noise. One was the heat shield next to the fuel tank as it was lightly touching it. A simple bending cured that one. The second source of noise was from where the two sections of the heat shield connect above the catalytic converter (and no, I didn't realize I had a catalytic converter until I saw it!). Anyway, the way I fixed that second buzzing sound was I cleaned off the heat shield joint above the converter and stuck a large glob of RTV silicon on it, smearing it into the joint. Let it cure for a day and the sheet metal buzzing was gone.
View attachment 961595View attachment 961596

The Troubling thing is when I can hear a noise above the sound of the heater fan...

 

[LCA078]

Yeah, that's a pretty bad noise- even for us seasoned folk.