Hot bench fire drill or clean removal, which do you trust more?
Last Tuesday I was reworking a nav radio in the hangar at KPDX and static discharge took out a fresh capacitor bank before I even buttoned the unit up. I yanked power, checked the bench ground strap, and still had to chase a ghost short for two hours with a meter. That got me thinking about how some guys swear by hot swapping parts while the unit is live to catch faults fast, but I've seen a co-worker fry a $400 board doing that exact move. I'm in the camp of power down, cap dump, and probe everything cold first, even if it eats up more time. But there's another tech here who says live troubleshooting is the only way to find intermittent gremlins before you seal the case. So which method do you lean on when a unit acts up after a simple solder job, and what's the worst bench surprise you've pulled off without losing a module? The last time I tried hot probing I blew a fuse and smelled magic smoke for a week.