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Hot take: I rigged every static wick on my own plane with safety wire until a shop in Tulsa asked why I was grounding the airframe to the wing
Turned out I'd been bonding static dischargers to bare aluminum instead of the isolated base for 6 years, and one continuity check on a ramp in Tulsa showed me the resistance was basically zero, so what's the actual rule you all follow for wick bonding?
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keith_rodriguez9d ago
Watched a buddy do almost the same thing on his 182, he bonded all his wicks straight to the skin and swore it was fine for years. Then his avionics guy found the whole airframe acting like one big ground plane, and the static noise on his radios was a mess the whole time. Pulled the wicks off, checked the bases, and half of them were the isolated type that should never touch bare metal. He redid every one with the proper bonding strap to the airframe ground point and the noise cleared up on the next flight. Point is, the rule is you bond to whatever the wick base is designed for, not just to the nearest bare aluminum. Read the install sheet for the wick, it tells you if the base is isolated or not, and that saves you six years of doing it wrong.
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