[supdaf]

I think that all questions are easy if you already know the answers. Troubleshooting most anything, cars, airplanes or even tricycles is the same way. I would like to think that I and my fellow aircraft maintenance professionals would easily find a broken antenna especially if it is located on the bottom of the fuselage, however I work with some of these guys and in any endevor? abilities go from the best to the worst. All in all the guys I work with are pretty sharp and it suprises me that someone would not inspect the antenna at some point after a repetitive write up.

In all honesty I think we all try to find ways to make our daily chores easier and faster. You can call it laziness or you can spin it to something like productivity. At my company, in our business we are charged with doing more and more with less and less. It is easy to hit the test switch and when you hear the voice say "TCAS system OK" call it good and drive on to the many other things that have to be done before the night is over. How much time did the mechanic have to work on the problem? Was there an antenna fault message present? call them excuses but realize there is another side.

When was the last time you flew multiple legs without the autopilot, autothrottle, or flight management computer? Last night I had to spend time repairing the captains cup holder. No other writeups on the aircraft so if that is all he could find well I guess we are doing a pretty good job down here on the wrench end.

I am not about to knock pilots because we need each other. If it aint fixed you can't fly it and if you don't fly the thing it won't break and I have to fix something else for a living. Kind of like my 911. If it sits in the garage it aint no fun at all.