Luck of the Draw

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...

Knock Knock Joke

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.”...

Wiggle Room

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...

Unfortunate Timing

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...