by Mike Busch | Nov 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
When the pilot of a round-the-world flight found himself AOG in Iceland with electrical issues, remote diagnosis saved the day. Ademilola “Lola” Odujinrin has a passion for aviation. He’s 37 years old, resides in Nigeria with his wife and two school-age children, and...
by Joe Godfrey | Oct 15, 2016 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Recently I was talking with fellow pilots about flight diversions – things that pop up in flight that would cause you to change your plans and make a precautionary landing. We covered the obvious examples like fire and engine failure, then added control failure,...
by Mike Busch | Oct 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
A&Ps are trained to find things wrong with your aircraft. But there’s a time and place for that, and it comes once a year. It was the week before AirVenture 2016. Normally, I would never perform any maintenance on my trusty Cessna 310 immediately before departing...
by Joe Godfrey | Sep 15, 2016 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Like millions of others, last week I saw Sully recently. If you’re a pilot, I don’t see how you avoid wondering what you would have done with a powerless airliner at 2800 feet and no good options. I’m not giving anything away to tell you that...
by Mike Busch | Sep 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, Magazine Articles
Fixing is usually the easiest part of aircraft maintenance. Figuring out what’s wrong is usually the hardest part. By Mike Busch | A&P/IA A funny thing happened on my way to Milwaukee… It was 2013 and I was flying my trusty 1979 Cessna T310R to speak at the...
by Joe Godfrey | Aug 15, 2016 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
In case there was any doubt, this Puzzler is about mag checks. Specifically, it’s to introduce a new way to display the data from mag checks. For a while now, analysts have been doing this manually and now we have a button that automates the process. And we...
by Mike Busch | Aug 1, 2016 | AOPA Pilot Magazine, 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 keep us from...
by Joe Godfrey | Jul 15, 2016 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
Franklin P. Jones, a Philadelphia reporter, said that experience is what allows us to recognize a mistake when we make it again. That’s a mildly cynical approach, and the true value of experience should be to recognize the pattern that led to the previous...
by Mike Busch | Jul 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 thorough pre-buy performed by an independent...
by Joe Godfrey | Jun 15, 2016 | SavvyAnalysis Puzzlers
I MIFfed my airplane this week. I was installing the passenger seat in my Bellanca Viking – something I’ve done many, many times over my 26 years of ownership, and broke a weld between the seat frame and the seat rail. It’s not a huge repair, and...
