by Mike Busch | May 1, 2018 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
What’s inside your engine’s crankcase? Reciprocating aircraft engines come in a variety of different cylinder arrangements—radial, inline, V, and opposed—but most engines used in piston general aviation are horizontally opposed four- and six-cylinder engines. These...
by Joe Godfrey | Apr 21, 2018 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Strong passwords, frequently changed passwords, biometric scans and two factor authentication are some of the technologies developed to keep information accessible to those who should have it, and away from those who shouldn’t. Every time I have to track down my...
by Mike Busch | Apr 1, 2018 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Basics of piston aircraft engine fuel metering systems If you fly a piston aircraft, chances are it has a spark-ignition (SI) engines that burns gasoline. There also exist compression-ignition (CI) engines—also called diesels—that burn kerosene, but in today’s GA...
by Joe Godfrey | Mar 14, 2018 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
I just filled out my bracket for this month’s college basketball tournament. If you live outside the US, or you don’t follow sports, it’s an annual ritual where American sports fans try and guess which of 64 teams will win every game over the course...
by Mike Busch | Mar 1, 2018 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Some thought-provoking comparisons I received a thought-provoking email from AOPA PILOT reader Nate Bissonette of St. Paul, Minnesota that started me thinking about differences between automobiles and GA airplanes. According to data from the U.S. Department of...
by Joe Godfrey | Feb 16, 2018 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Sometimes the data that I gather to write about has an obvious theme. Sometimes I sort of manhandle them into a common theme. This month, it’s more of a collection of independent cases. First up is data from a Cirrus SR22 with a Continental IO-550-N and data...
by Mike Busch | Feb 1, 2018 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
How we coax metal aircraft parts into doing what must be done Metal is neat stuff. It’s strong, hard, and tough. It’s easy to form, work, shape and machine. It’s fireproof and can stand up to high temperatures. But these properties aren’t unique to metal. ...
by Joe Godfrey | Jan 21, 2018 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
One of the most famous and inspirational sayings in aviation and aerospace is “failure is not an option.” If you like the Ron Howard movie Apollo 13, chances are you’d like the book – or the Audible version – about the American space...
by Mike Busch | Jan 1, 2018 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
When aircraft problems occur, we always want an explanation but don’t always get one I receive thousands of emails from aircraft owners each year, but this one was unusual. It was nearly 3,000 words long—twice the length of this article. The 7,500-hour CFI who wrote...
by developer | Dec 14, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
by Paul Kortopates One of the more common turbo problems we see are erratic fluctuations in MAP. Below is a plot of MAP (the red trace) & Altitude (the yellow trace) of a Cirrus. Although the data is a bit coarse with a 6 sec data sampling rate, when zoomed in we...
