by Mike Busch | Mar 6, 2024 | Magazine Articles
Each time you change mixture, RPM or MP, it affects combustion timing. Understanding how is your best defense against harming your engine by doing something dumb. My last few columns focused on the physics of the combustion event in Otto-cycle engines. I’m sure this...
by Mike Busch | Mar 6, 2024 | Magazine Articles
Often confused and misunderstood, these two abnormal combustion phenomena are as different as night and day. Although we often hear people describe what goes on inside the cylinders of an Otto-cycle engine as being an explosion – i.e., a violent, nearly-instantaneous...
by Mike Busch | Mar 6, 2024 | Magazine Articles
These two key measurements can tell us a lot about what’s going on inside our cylinders. My column last month talked about the fact that our piston aircraft engines convert only about one-third of the energy contained in avgas into useful energy to the propeller....
by Mike Busch | Mar 6, 2024 | Magazine Articles
The modern probe-per-cylinder digital engine monitor is a marvelous tool for keeping tabs on your engine’s health and troubleshooting its maladies. Here are some tips for figuring out what those bars and digits mean. This is embarrassing, but I might as well come...
by Mike Busch | Mar 1, 2024 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Weak compression doesn’t always mean that the cylinder has to come off. For most of my nearly six decades as an aircraft owner and three decades as an A&P, the rule about cylinders was simple: If the compression reading was less than 60/80, the cylinder had to...
