by Mike Busch | Nov 13, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
In the early 1940s as World War II was raging, the distinguished British biologist ConradHal (C.H.) Waddington Ph.D. had his academic career temporarily interrupted when he became involved in operations research for the Royal Air Force Coastal Command. The...
by Mike Busch | Oct 15, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
I got my first car when I was 17 years old. It was a green 1947 Plymouth sedan, a hand-me-down from my parents that they used as an excuse to buy a brand new 1961 Chrysler.I remember back then that the gasoline was heavily leaded, the engine oils were refined from...
by Mike Busch | Sep 15, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
In my column in the June 2025 issue of AOPA Pilot (“Borescope Initiative”), I reported on the initiative we launched on January 1, 2024 to promote and improve the use of borescopes as the gold standard for assessing cylinder condition for piston aircraft...
by Mike Busch | Jul 16, 2025 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
I last wrote about Project GADfly in the November 2022 issue of AOPA Pilot (“When Data Doesn’t Look Right”). This was a first peek at an R&D effort here at Savvy Aviation to harness artificial intelligence to analyze the 10,000 flights of digital engine...
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...
