As we enter our 5th year of Savvy Analysis Pro, we have – as the guy on TV says – seen a thing or two in terms of the Savvy Test Profile. We decided it was time for an update, and I thought this month’s Puzzler would be an ideal time and place to review…
Corroboration – evidence that supports a proposition that already has some supporting evidence – is an important component of engine data analysis. Corroboration can come from other data, or from the pilot who submits the analysis request. In analyzing the data, it helps us to have comments like “I thought the engine would shake itself…
I’ll admit stealing the title from Stephen Jay Gould’s work on paleontology. I’m a big fan of his writing and he left us far too soon. So what’s the connection to engine data? It’s a stretch, and it’s not my area of study, but here goes. Until Gould – and his co-author Niles Eldredge – shared their…
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, engine roughness, and deteriorating weather, but we were kind of split…
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 one of the great lines in the movie is Capt.…
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 decided to make it available to all…
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 mistake, remember the outcome, and avoid making that mistake again. Applied to engine data analysis, it’s…
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 considering how many times it has been in…
Every flight is a series of decisions. Sometimes the decisions are easy — weather’s too bad, pilot’s not feeling good, airplane’s not ready or equipped for the trip. This month’s Puzzler is a series of three flights, each with its own decision tree opportunities. Let’s warm up with data from a Cirrus SR22 with a Continental/Tornado…
If you’ve been flying LOP in cruise for a while you might forget that not so very long ago operating piston engines LOP was, shall we say – frowned upon. POHs didn’t mention it, except to say don’t do it. Some of the resistance was dismantled with the advent of multi-cylinder EGT gauges. But Insight…