by Mike Busch | Dec 1, 2017 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Industry and the FAA meet to discuss GA piston engine issues In mid-September 2017, I was invited to participate in a two-day “GA Engine Summit” meeting in Burlington, Massachusetts—about 30 minutes’ drive northwest of Boston. This meeting was a long-awaited sequel to...
by Joe Godfrey | Nov 18, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
In math, a conjecture is a statement you believe to be true based on observations. That sounds like something you could trust and act on. Webster’s says it’s an inference formed without proof or sufficient evidence. That sounds like conclusion jumping that...
by Mike Busch | Nov 1, 2017 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Can a mechanic hold an aircraft hostage? Or just part of it? The mechanic who phoned me sounded agitated. He explained that he’d been an A&P for quite a while, but had earned his IA recently and was relatively new to the business of doing annual inspections. An...
by Joe Godfrey | Oct 21, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
NTSB concluded that Eastern flight 401 crashed into the Everglades in 1972 because all three crew members were fixated on a failed landing light. The lemonade was aviation’s adoption of CRM. As valuable as trustworthy engine data can be for the success of a...
by Mike Busch | Oct 1, 2017 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Thanks to teamwork, tens of thousands of aircraft owners dodged a devastating bullet As I write this, the aviation blogosphere and Twitterverse are abuzz over the near-disaster at San Francisco International Airport, when an arriving Air Canada A320 on a night visual...
by Joe Godfrey | Sep 24, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Assume – yep, we all know what those letters stand for. I can’t speak for “u” but assuming has made an ass out of “me” more than once. There’s a fair amount of assuming attached to any endeavor, including engine data analysis....
by Mike Busch | Sep 1, 2017 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Must manufacturer’s maintenance guidance be followed? Have you ever had your mechanic tell you something like this: “It has been six years since your propeller was last overhauled, so we’re going to have to overhaul it this year as required by Hartzell.” “Your...
by Joe Godfrey | Aug 19, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
There’s a running gag in my family when a mechanical device isn’t performing properly. It takes three people. After the owner of the device has described the symptoms in detail to the other two people, they offer suggestions about what’s causing the...
by Mike Busch | Aug 1, 2017 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
The first flight after maintenance is special. My client wanted to buy a Bonanza A36, and narrowed his search to two promising candidates. One had recently suffered a “forgot to remove the tow bar” prop strike, necessitating an engine teardown inspection and prop...
by Joe Godfrey | Jul 17, 2017 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
I have written about this before, but not in two years, and with lots of new clients and a couple of new Savvy services in that time, it seemed like a good time for a biennial review. The comedians are fond of saying, “Timing is everything.” I think the quality of the...
