by Mike Busch | Aug 12, 2024 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles
Can a mechanic who works on your plane refuse to sign it off or put it back together? Boston-based Cirrus owner Mark (not his real name) was flying his turbonormalized SR22 home to Norwood Memorial Airport on what was probably going to be his last flight prior to...
by Mike Busch | Jun 6, 2024 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Recently, a client with an older Cessna 182 Skylane reported that his nose landing gear strut was leaking fluid and repeatedly going flat. Inspection revealed that the original chrome strut piston had become badly pitted and was tearing up the nose strut seals. The...
by Mike Busch | Jun 1, 2024 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
My company manages a lot of prebuys. At any given point in time, we typically have a dozen of them in progress. We’ve managed thousands of them over the years, and seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Most of the time, the aircraft turn out to be in decent shape and...
by Mike Busch | May 1, 2024 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
What we can learn from medicine about fixing things without taking them apart. A longtime friend who was suffering from extreme fatigue and shortness of breath. She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure caused by aortic valve stenosis, and she required an aortic...
by Mike Busch | Apr 1, 2024 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Teaching owners (and mechanics) how to do borescope inspections right In my last column (“Ending the War on Jugs,” AOPA Pilot March 2024 issue), I talked at length about why we should use the borescope—not the compression tester—as the gold standard for assessing...
