Spark today

[TRun]

I was getting ready to leave for work this morning and when I went to plug in my 690se a bright spark came upon inserting the cord. It was very dark out and the spark actually appeared inside the detector as I saw it through the speaker grill. I was really worried that it cooked itself or something but I had some good K and Ka encounters today so it appears to have dodged a bullet. Anyone else had something like this happen before???

[Sandman76]

All electrical devices operate on smoke, once you let the smoke out, they don't work no more.

[TRun]

I did not see or smell any smoke

[Sandman76]

I did not see or smell any smoke

Of course you didn't, you said it still works.

[languy99]

I say it is normal, the only reason you saw it is because it was dark out. Electronics use capacitors to absorbe these spikes of high voltage. Anything that has a mechanical hook up will spark like this, light switches, relays, motors and such.

[Jag42]

I have had this happen and i think the LED'S get stuck on when this happens.

[Freebird]

WOW, never seen that one before...

[MOPARado]

This is not normal.
If you were lucky, there was maybe a small sliver of free floating solder other conducting left over junk from the manufacturing process that just happened to be between a B+ trace and a ground trace and got vaporized. Might of even been a marginal trace to trace short circuit that decided to go solid and got vaporized or some component that got fried.
The good news is it didn't blow the inline fuse which means whatever caused the spark was relatively low current or else the thing woulda probably smoked.

You might want to shake that detector and see if something rattles inside and keep a close eye on its performance.
If it were mine, I wouldn't trust it anymore and send it in.

[upstatedoc]

a bright spark came upon inserting the cord. It was very dark out and the spark actually appeared inside the detector as I saw it through the speaker grill.

All electrical devices operate on smoke, once you let the smoke out, they don't work no more.

I did not see or smell any smoke

I did not see or smell any smoke

Of course you didn't, you said it still works.

Classic thread progression.

[Michael B]

Does not sound like an issue. Any electronic item that has a draw of 100ma or more when plugged in will have a noticible small spark at the point of initial electrical connection. It was only noticed because it was very dark.