by Joe Godfrey | Jun 13, 2025 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Each month, my colleagues and I tag some of our tickets as puzzler candidates. You never know at the beginning of the month what you’ll wind up with as the deadline approaches. The worst case scenario would be a collection of similar anomalies – like...
by Joe Godfrey | May 15, 2025 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Knock knock. Who’s there? An intermittent knocking sound that only happens in certain flight configurations and is probably not a safety of flight issue but could become one because it’s distracting the pilot from his primary job of “aviate.”...
by Joe Godfrey | Apr 16, 2025 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
One of my favorite movie scenes is early in The Hunt for Red October when sonar expert Jonesy tries to convince sub Captain Mancuso that a sound pattern was mechanical and not “whales humping”. Spoiler alert: it’s the Red October’s advanced...
by Mike Busch | Mar 20, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
For 20 years I’ve been preaching about the benefits of using borescope inspections as the gold standard for assessing cylinder condition. Yet we still see far too much dependence on the traditional (and unreliable) differential compression test. Mechanics are removing...
by Mike Busch | Mar 20, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Picture this: For several months, you’ve been suffering from debilitating pain that seems to run from your lower back and radiate into your right upper leg. You report this to your primary care physician, who refers you to an orthopedic surgeon. The orthopod asks you...
by Mike Busch | Mar 20, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
My 80th Christmas was a memorable one. I had been feeling guilty about all the time my poor airplane had been sitting unloved in the hangar during the last months of 2024, and I decided that Christmas week would be a great time to do some serious flying. I’d been...
by Mike Busch | Mar 20, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Like many of you, I’m an aircraft owner. I have been one for a long time. I bought my first airplane—a Cessna 182—in 1968 when I was 24 years old. Four years later at age 28, I traded up to a Bellanca 17-30A Super Viking. Then at age 43, I upgraded to a Cessna Turbo...
by Joe Godfrey | Mar 19, 2025 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Continental has a CHT redline of 460º. Lycoming’s beefier head-to-barrel construction and sodium-filled valves push their CHT redline to 500º. If you had a detonation event that sent one cylinder’s CHT past the redline – you know exactly how long and...
by Joe Godfrey | Feb 13, 2025 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
If you applied the scientific method to troubleshooting a GA engine, problem, you’d isolate one variable, make an adjustment, and assess the results. But it’s not practical. In the real world with a mechanic shortage it’s hard enough to get shop time...
by Mike Busch | Jan 16, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Why don’t more A&Ps use engine monitor data for troubleshooting? The owner of a 2005 Cessna T182 was on vacation in Key West Florida. He decided to go up for a local sightseeing flight, but when he started the Lycoming TIO-540 engine it seemed to be running...
