Colyn Case said:


The pro-fuse argument makes sense to me except for one thing:   A breaker
gives you a positive indication that it interrupted the circuit.  A fuse,
particularly a hidden fuse, gives you no indication.


I thought that would be bad because I'm left to diagnose a problem with
incomplete information.   e.g. my trim isn't working - is it something I can
do something about or is the trim servo toasted?


You fuse guys must have thought about this.  What's the counter-argument?


Colyn,

You have a good point if you intend/need to troubleshoot while still in the
air. As I noted in my original post, many years of doing this in military
fighters (as a weapon systems operator-with a well qualified pilot still
flying the jet and typically swearing because his xyz was not working)
convinced me that this was (in my experience) a totally pointless exercise.
I'm pretty sure I never recovered a system by resetting a CB, and I once
caused a fire in the cockpit, and killed a generator another time. Still,
I've heard that others have successfully recovered systems by resetting
CB's. So in the end, you make your own tradeoffs/decisions. Everything is a
compromise at some level.


Bob