If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my company’s managing tens of thousands of annual inspections for thousands of airplanes over the past two decades, it’s this: Doing maintenance in a thoughtful, data-driven, reliability-centered fashion results in a safer, more...
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 we work through the decision tree to figure out...
General aviation doesn’t change in sudden revolutions. It evolves quietly: through material choices, certification decisions, engineering tradeoffs, and lessons learned the hard way over decades. In this episode of Aviation Masters, host Mike Busch sits down with...
When a prospective aircraft purchaser arranges for a prebuy examination, the objective is two-fold: to uncover any big-ticket issues with the aircraft, and to ensure that the cost of correcting them is properly allocated between the buyer and the seller. In this case,...
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 ability to notice and understand...
A&P’s are born with an itch to take things apart. That’s what drew us to aircraft maintenance in the first place. Airplanes are very cool and complicated machines, and it’s hard to resist the temptation to disassemble and dissect them to learn how they work....
If you have ever been told, “That’s just how piston engines work,” this episode of Aviation Masters might make you raise an eyebrow and then start asking more questions. In this episode, host Mike Busch sits down with George Braly, one of the most influential (and...
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 guy better known as a singer, arranger and...
Since we launched our borescope initiative in January 2024, more than 150,000 borescope images have been uploaded to Savvy’s repository, and about 100,000 of them have been reviewed by our analytical team. We’ve been particularly interested in exhaust valve images,...
A true story of smart maintenance management. When a Cirrus SR22TN owner was told his camshaft was failing and a $54,000 engine overhaul was required, he turned to SavvyMx before signing the work order. What happened next shows exactly why having Savvy on your...
