AOPA Pilot Magazine

“You snooze, you lose” or “caveat emptor”? The market for used GA airplanes is crazy right now. In the five decades I’ve been paying attention to such things, I’ve never seen anything like it. Other GA industry veterans I’ve spoken with all tell me the same thing. There’s an airplane buying spree going on, apparently […]

You can learn a lot from your airplane’s report card Jack owns a 2016 Cirrus SR22 with a Garmin Perspective glass cockpit—basically a G1000 on steroids. His MFD records tons of data on an SD card—CHTs, EGTs, oil pressure and temperature, MAP, RPM, fuel flow, altitude, TAS, electrical bus voltages and current, even GPS coordinates—and […]

Does your engine REALLY need to be euthanized? “I’m in trouble. Can you help?”  The owner of the vintage Mooney was obviously stressed. He identified himself as a highly experienced military pilot but a first-time aircraft owner who’d recently flown his airplane to Florida on business.  When it came time to return home, the Mooney’s […]

Low compression doesn’t always require cylinder removal Sam’s 1979 Piper PA-34-200T Seneca II was in the shop, and Sam was not happy. The shop had just done a compression test on the plane’s two Continental TSIO-360-EB3B engines and had given Sam some unwelcome news…  “Compression on left #4 is 35/80 and right #3 is 31/80,” […]

Chasing down an elusive charging system gremlin Intermittent problems are the worst! They always seem to happen at the worst possible time, like when you’re in the middle of nowhere away from home base. They never seem to happen when you want them to happen, like when you’re trying to show them to your A&P […]

How often does your propeller REALLY need to get overhauled? “Your prop is due for overhaul,” says your IA who you hired to do your annual inspection. “It’s been six years.” If your airplane has a constant-speed prop, overhauling it is going to set you back about $3,000 including removal and installation labor.  If it […]

What to do about uncomfortably high CHT For decades now, I’ve been preaching that the two keys to piston aircraft engine longevity are avoiding extended periods of disuse and managing CHT. If you allow your engine to sit unflown for weeks at a time, you risk internal corrosion—and corrosion is the number one reason that […]

This cutting-edge technology could revolutionize GA maintenance. The exhaust valve is the most likely component of a piston aircraft engine to fail catastrophically. When one fails, combustion ceases in the cylinder, the engine loses power and starts running rough. This usually results in a precautionary landing—on-airport if you’re lucky, off-airport if you’re not. It’s particularly […]

If your A&P seems over-cautious and self-protective, there’s good reason. By Mike Busch Mechanics have always been subject to FAA sanctions: certificate suspension or revocation, fines, warning notices, letters of correction, and remedial training. But enforcement actions against GA mechanics were exceedingly rare. The most common way for a mechanic to run afoul of the […]

When piston airplanes are fueled with Jet A, bad things can happen. On March 2, 2008, a turbonormalized Cirrus SR22 was destroyed when it crashed shortly after takeoff in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, killing all four people aboard. Shortly after the aircraft departed from runway 20, the airplane’s engine lost power, and the aircraft hit […]

Lessons learned from geriatric engines. Time Between Overhaul (TBO) is a strange concept. The FAA, in its infinite wisdom, requires aircraft engine manufacturers to publish TBOs for their engines, but doesn’t require aircraft owners to abide by them. You are free to continue flying behind your engine as it remains airworthy.  Yet many owners and […]

Thoughts on finding a good purchase candidate An extraordinary number of GA airplanes were bought and sold in 2020. I imagine this was somehow related to the pandemic, although I’m not sure exactly how. What I do know is that my company had been averaging about 10 prebuys per month in 2019, but by the […]

What happens when an owner and an IA can’t agree? By Mike Busch Sam is a pilot, engineer and serial entrepreneur who lives near Washington DC. About 10 years ago, he bought a 1966 Cessna 182J Skylane that is based and maintained in nearby Maryland. It’s been a pretty economical airplane to operate and maintain. […]

An FAA review of 10 years of NTSB data tries to quantify the risk. I’ve been known preach about the virtues of maintenance minimalism—a.k.a. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”—and the risk of maintenance-induced failures—a.k.a. “MIFs.” But just how risky is maintenance? How often to MIFs occur? How serious are the consequences when they […]

Preventing and dealing with magneto-ignition system failure. Both the FARs and their predecessor CARs require that certificated spark-ignition recip-rocating aircraft engines—the kind most of us fly behind—have fully redundant dual ignition systems: PART 33—AIRWORTHINESS STANDARDS: AIRCRAFT ENGINESSubpart C—Design and Construction; Reciprocating Aircraft Engines§ 33.37   Ignition system. Each spark ignition engine must have a dual […]

The spark plugs in most piston aircraft engines are still powered by 120-year-old technology. My airplane’s piston engines utilize a magneto ignition system. If you’re flying a certificated airplane, chances are good that yours does, too. The fact that we’re still stuck with these superannuated mechanical black boxes is a testament to just how hard […]

Rigid baffles and flexible baffle seals are critical in keeping your engine cool. The Cessna T210 owner was clearly frustrated with his new engine installation: “I recently had my engine rebuilt and had a new baffle kit installed. The CHTs for cylinders #5 and #6 are always 20ºF to 30ºF hotter than the rest. During […]

Maintenance-induced problems are common, and it often an experienced pair of eyes to diagnose them. Elko Regional Airport (KEKO) is located in northeast Nevada at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level, and is known for its competitive avgas prices. It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere…but if you happen to be flying […]

There’s a lot more to piston aircraft engine oil than you might think When it comes to piston aircraft engines, the role of engine oil is complicated. It lubricates moving parts to reduce friction and wear, but that’s only one of six key functions it performs, and perhaps not even the most important one. The […]

What if your airplane breaks and there’s no one to fix it? Being a dyed-in-the-wool technology freak, I drive a Tesla Model 3. It has been a superbly reliable vehicle that doesn’t require maintenance very often. But when it does, I take my Tesla to the nearest Tesla dealership, where it is worked on by […]

Why it’s no substitute for a proper independent prebuy. Every month I receive hundreds of emails from aircraft owners seeking advice or assistance. For the most part, I genuinely enjoy these interactions and the opportunity to help fellow aircraft owners.  Occasionally, however, I run into something that I find deeply disturbing. That was the case […]

…and how you can avoid engine damage and power loss if you know the answer. If you fly behind a Continental or Lycoming, each of your engine’s cylinders has two valves, intake and exhaust. The valves open and close by sliding in and out through close-tolerance tubes called valve guides that are press-fit into the […]

When it comes to GA crashes, the NTSB doesn’t always get it right, nor does the jury In December of 2012, a father and his son arrived at the airport to pick up the father’s Cessna 421C cabin-class piston twin, which had been in the maintenance shop for months receiving a new paint job and […]

Condition-based maintenance meets big data and artificial intelligence For the past 20 years, I’ve been preaching the gospel of Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM), the then-revolutionary philosophy of maintenance developed in the 1960s at United Airlines by aeronautical engineer Stanley Nowlan and mathermatician Howard Heap. RCM was almost universally adopted by the airlines in the 1970s, by […]