Magazine Articles

Before following expert advice, choose your expert with care. We aviators are of necessity a trusting lot. We constantly trust other people with our lives, our safety, and our financial wellbeing. We trust nameless and faceless air traffic controllers to...

What Does “Airworthy” Mean?

by Mike Busch | July 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

The definition of this ubiquitous term depends on the context. A bit over two years ago, a fellow I’ll call “Bob” bought a 10-year-old Cirrus SR22 from another fellow I’ll call “Sam.” Prior to the purchase, Bob had a very...

Is Repair a Lost Art?

by Mike Busch | June 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

Aircraft parts are expensive, so we really should be repairing rather than replacing them whenever possible. When the co-owner of a 1976 Cessna 172M emailed me, she had just come from talking to her mechanic and was clearly in a...

A Mechanic’s Signature

by Mike Busch | May 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

What do you do if a mechanic working on your airplane tells you, “I can’t sign it off”? Dick is the maintenance officer of an 80-member flying club in northern New Jersey. The club operates several aircraft including a 2011...

LSAs: Who’s Guarding the Henhouse?

by Mike Busch | April 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

The new crop of factory-built LSAs are impressive and exciting, but the maintenance regulations for them are…ah…different I recently returned from the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Florida, the foremost aviation event devoted to light sport, homebuilt, and ultralight...

Inaugural GA Engine Summit

by Mike Busch | March 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

FAA’s Engine & Propeller Directorate meets with GA to improve how ADs are dealt with. Early last December, I had the privilege of attending a two-day meeting at the offices of the FAA’s Engine & Propeller Directorate (EPD) in Burlington,...

Fear and Balderdash

by Mike Busch | February 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

Maintenance decisions need to be fact- and evidence-based. The current owner of the vintage J-model Bonanza emailed me for advice. He’d purchased the airplane just four months earlier with a fresh annual inspection, and was already stressing out about what...

Watch Your Language!

by Mike Busch | January 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

When requesting maintenance, the words you use can be very important. The voice on the phone identified himself as a Cessna 182 owner—let’s call him Jim—who said he was considering overhauling his O-470-R engine and could use some advice. I...

Insurance Woes

by Mike Busch | December 1, 2015 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

When repairs are covered by insurance, it’s the owner’s job to keep things under control. By the time he contacted me, the aircraft owner—let’s call him Fred—was boiling mad. Fred had bought an airplane last year, and the pre-buy and...

Blame the Hardware

by Mike Busch | November 1, 2015 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

When pilots screw up, plaintiff lawyers always seem to sue equipment manufacturers. In June 2014, I posted an item to the AOPA Opinion Leaders Blog titled “The Dark Side of Maintenance.” It talked about what I refer to as “maintenance-induced...

Tectonic Shifts

by Mike Busch | October 1, 2015 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles

Changing competitive landscape in piston GA aircraft and engines. By Mike Busch I just returned from EAA AirVenture 2015 in Oshkosh, where aviation firms traditionally make major announcements. This year was no exception. One of the most significant announcements to...

Don’t Go Overboard

by Mike Busch | September 11, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Suppressing the urge to overreact to and overkill problems. The Bonanza owner encountered an engine problem 11 hours after his aircraft came out of annual. He had crossed the Sierra Nevada Mountains VFR at 12,500 feet westbound enroute to the...

Backdoor Rulemaking?

by Mike Busch | August 15, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Cessna gets caught with its hand in the FAA’s cookie jar. On February 10, 2014, the Cessna Aircraft Company did something quite unprecedented in the history of piston GA: It published a revision to the service manual for cantilever-wing Cessna...

Discrepancy Discretion

by Mike Busch | August 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Who decides whether or not your aircraft is airworthy? By Mike Busch My column in the May 2015 issue of EAA Sport Aviation, titled “Fix It Now…Or Fix It Later,” discussed how to deal with mechanical problems on the road....

Why I Hate Pulling Jugs

by Mike Busch | July 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

It’s riskier business than most owners or A&Ps realize. Regular readers of this column know how I feel about changing cylinders in the field. I hate it. Especially when several cylinders are changed at one time; this is risky business....

Alterations

by Mike Busch | June 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Clearing up confusion about aircraft mods. You want to modify your certificated aircraft. Let’s say it’s something simple like adding an extra cigarette lighter socket to power your portable GPS or cellphone charger. Or installing an external mirror so you...

Fix It Now…Or Fix It Later?

by Mike Busch | May 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

You’re on a trip when a mechanical arises. First you mutter the obligatory expletives, and then you must decide: Should you get the problem fixed now, or live with it until you get home? Nothing is more frustrating than dealing...

Oleos

by Mike Busch | April 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Oleopneumatic shock struts use hydraulic fluid, compressed gas, and darn clever engineering to improve our landings. If every one of our landings were a “greaser” and if runways never had bumps or potholes, then the landing gear on our airplanes...

150 Year-Old Technology

by Mike Busch | March 15, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Most of us are still flying (and driving) behind powerplant technology that dates from the 19th century. The original four-stroke Otto-cycle internal-combustion engine was patented in 1862 by a Frenchman named Alphonse Beau de Rochas. More scientist than engineer, de...

The Perfect Mechanic

by Mike Busch | January 1, 2015 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

What to look for when choosing an A&P to work on your aircraft. Over the past 45 years, I’ve had the opportunity—and often the privilege—of working with hundreds of aircraft mechanics. At first it was as a naïve aircraft owner...

Silent Killer

by Mike Busch | December 1, 2014 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

If you think CO-related accidents are rare, think again… On January 17, 1997, a Piper Dakota departed Farmingdale, New York, on a planned two-hour VFR flight to Saranac Lake, New York. The pilot was experienced and instrument-rated; his 71-year-old mother,...

Prebuy Do’s and Don’ts

by Mike Busch | November 1, 2014 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

If you’re buying an aircraft, here’s how to structure the prebuy. Over the past six months, my company’s prebuy activity has gone right through the roof. We’ve been responding to 30 to 50 prebuy requests a month, perhaps four times...

Energy and Efficiency

by Mike Busch | October 1, 2014 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

Why are our piston aircraft engines so @#$%*! inefficient? Our piston aircraft engines convert chemical energy into mechanical work, but they don’t do it very efficiently. It turns out that only about one-third of the energy contained in the 100LL...

Human Error

by Mike Busch | September 1, 2014 | EAA Sport Aviation Magazine, Magazine Articles

“To err is human…” but when humans make mistakes working on aircraft, bad things can happen. During the century since the Wright Brothers first flew, the predominant perpetrator in aircraft accidents has shifted dramatically from machine to human. Today, human...