Pinpointing The Problem

Apropos of the danger posed by arcing in bad wires, the FAA has awarded a $1.5 million contract to New York-based Astronics Corp. to develop further its ARCSAFE wiring integrity tester. The goal is to isolate the exact location of the fault, even those not visible to the naked eye. As the company's announcement said, "Standard preventive maintenance procedures currently involve time-consuming and error-prone visual inspections." In fact, just such visual inspections were recently proposed by the FAA (see ASW, Oct. 17). Upon completion of the development contracts, there could be regulatory changes in wiring inspections requiring the use of technology such as ARCSAFE.