This Mortal Coil
Shakespeare loved a good pun. Even he might groan at this one. I wanted to write about magnetos and I recently saw “Hamnet” and you know the rest. Usually the format of the Puzzler is I present a scenario and...
SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Every month, Joe Godfrey, Savvy’s chief data analyst, presents captivating aviation “puzzlers” derived from real-life engine monitor data on the SavvyAnalysis platform, guiding pilots in identifying anomalies for real-time safety decisions and assisting owners in informed maintenance choices.
Are You Perspicacious?
Can you tell I made a New Year’s resolution to kick my vocabulary up a notch? Perspicacious is a hard word to work into conversation but it pretty accurately describes a Puzzler reader. I like this definition — showing an...
Chestnuts
Technically the title is The Christmas Song but when a musician calls it on a gig it’s Chestnuts — as in roasting on an open fire. It’s a good lyric full of holiday imagery and it’s a great tune by...
A Bill of Goods
When my grandmother would say “He sure sold you a bill of goods” there wasn’t anything good about it. The dictionary says the phrase has two meanings. The first is literal, meaning a list of merchandise. But the second meeting...
Continuity
I’ve been training new analysts recently, and I thought I would share some thoughts about continuity. Of course signal continuity is important for sensors and probes so we have reliable data to perform actionable analysis. I’ve made this point before...
GADFly in Action
Years ago, when we noticed that one of the data signatures of a burning valve was an oscillating pattern in the EGT trace, we got excited about the prospect of setting up automatic scans for other parameters. Would we be...
Inconceivable
It’s one of the great lines from a movie filled with great lines. Wallace Shawn was the perfect actor to deliver it, and now it’s hard to say the word without putting his unique cartoon-like spin on it. And now...
Bang for Your Buck VI
I have written about this before, every two years since 2015, and with lots of new clients and some new services since last time, it seemed like a good time for a biennial review. The comedians are fond of saying,...
Luck of the Draw
Each month, my colleagues and I tag some of our tickets as puzzler candidates. You never know at the beginning of the month what you’ll wind up with as the deadline approaches. The worst case scenario would be a collection...
Knock Knock Joke
Knock knock. Who’s there? An intermittent knocking sound that only happens in certain flight configurations and is probably not a safety of flight issue but could become one because it’s distracting the pilot from his primary job of “aviate.” Not...
Waterfalls, Spikes and a Fine Tooth Comb
One of my favorite movie scenes is early in The Hunt for Red October when sonar expert Jonesy tries to convince sub Captain Mancuso that a sound pattern was mechanical and not “whales humping”. Spoiler alert: it’s the Red October’s...
Wiggle Room
Continental has a CHT redline of 460º. Lycoming’s beefier head-to-barrel construction and sodium-filled valves push their CHT redline to 500º. If you had a detonation event that sent one cylinder’s CHT past the redline – you know exactly how long...
Unfortunate Timing
If you applied the scientific method to troubleshooting a GA engine, problem, you’d isolate one variable, make an adjustment, and assess the results. But it’s not practical. In the real world with a mechanic shortage it’s hard enough to get...
Grab Bag
It’s a January tradition to restate the mission of these Puzzlers. Our goal is to help pilots recognize data anomalies in real time to make good decisions about the safety of the flight, and help owners to make informed maintenance...
Chain Reaction
The Wright Brothers were the first to fly on this date in 1903. Growing up in southwest Ohio, we didn’t give a lot of credence to those floating other versions of history. It was Orville and Wilbur at Kitty Hawk...
A Dizzying Array of Data
Recently, one of our clients upgraded his JPI 700 to a Garmin G3X. Our tech specialist Kurt changed the account configuration so the new data will use the correct parser. In his note to the client, Kurt said “you’ll now...
Macco’s Razor
Is there a mirror image for Occam’s Razor? Seems like if we have a name for relying on the least complex explanation for a scenario, then we ought to have one for the most outlandish, unlikely, logic-defying explanation. For instance,...
Once in a Blue Moon
When we started our engine data analysis service in 2014, I wondered if we would see seasonal patterns in the data. For instance, would we see more probe failures in the heat of the summer? Would we see more stuck...
Can Lapping Save My Valve?
We rolled out Savvy’s Borescope Initiative in January. In the ensuing 7 1/2 months users have uploaded over 65,000 images to the repository. If you’re still waiting to participate, or if this is news to you, check out Savvy’s Borescope...
Mayday, Maybe
I’m brushing up my French for an upcoming trip and was reminded that Mayday comes from M’Aidez – Help Me. When I started flying in the ’70s the conventional wisdom from the old timers was “whatever you do don’t declare...
Intermittent
If an engine monitor probe or sensor is going to fail, would you rather have it just fail and be done with it, or have it be reliable some of the time and distracting some of the time? Neither has...
Hockey
Hockey playoffs are in full swing. It’s usually about this time of the year that I rewatch my favorite hockey movie “Miracle”, about the 1980 Olympics. So many great performances, including fellow pilot Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, but none...
Broken
The analysis team sees lots of malfunctions in the data we review. No surprise – most clients request analysis when something’s not right, so we’re not seeing the thousands of flights that go off without a hitch. So you could...
Deep Fake
Lately the news is filled with examples of deep fakes. This is nothing new for pilots. We practice partial panel approaches for scenarios where technology is trying to convince us that something phony is real. It’s nothing new for engine...