Puzzlers
by Joe Godfrey
Most of the time engine data is an important tool for helping us with powerplant management during a flight, and choosing efficient options when maintenance is needed. If you’re a regular Puzzler reader, you’ve seen lots of examples of that. But every once in a while, the data is so erratic or mysterious that it…
DetailsIn a prebuy exam, the logbooks are the most important item to review. If the logbooks check out ok, reviewing a set of borescope pictures is a good next step. If there are no dealbreakers so far, take a look at the engine data – at least for the last couple of years. When a…
DetailsAfter ten years of reviewing engine data, it’s getting harder to hit us with something we haven’t seen before. This month we had the usual contingent of clogged injectors, weak spark and induction leaks. But we had a few scenarios that caused some head scratching, speculating and postulating. Since day one, our goal has been…
DetailsAs Savvy Analysis turns ten, I thought I would try and see if the data shows that more engine monitors and more data analysis over the last ten years contributed to fewer accidents attributed to mechanical failure. You would think so, right? Engine data should make it easier to recognize problems, and knowing what the…
DetailsWhen we started Savvy Analysis Pro ten years ago, we wondered how long it would take before deep learning and artificial intelligence would take over and push the human analysts to the curb. In those ten years, we’ve rolled out Report Cards, Trend Analysis, reports, and three iterations of FEVA reports. Ten years ago we…
DetailsChapter 6 of the AIM covers emergency procedures, including the difference between distress – like fire, mechanical failure, oil on the windscreen, or structural damage – and urgency – like being lost, low on gas, encountering dangerous weather, or any other condition that could adversely affect flight safety. And 6-1-2 ends with “Pilots who become…
DetailsGood news! They’re making Spinal Tap 2, with plans to release it in 2024 – 40 years after the first one. Of all the great quotable lines in ST1, it’s hard to top “these go to eleven”. Sometimes we get a set of screwy engine data that makes us wonder if the data came from…
DetailsA lot of analysis requests begin with “Something bad just happened and we had to divert and land. Is there something in the data that would’ve told us this was about to happen?” Our first reaction is usually relief – that the pilot got on the ground safely and is able to make the request.…
DetailsBaseball has the cycle – single, double, triple and home run. What would that be for an analyst working a shift? Clogged injector is probably the single. Bad spark plug is probably the double. Let’s say the triple is a stuck valve. And the homer is a detonation event. How about a catastrophic part failure?…
DetailsApparently the 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle. Broadly applied, it means that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your outcomes. In my previous careers in advertising and education, I would contend that 80% of stuff I spent my time on were caused by 20% of my ad clients…
DetailsIt’s always fun at Oshkosh when one of the technologies of GA makes a move after spending a lot of time on the plateau. Avgas is the latest example. For years we just pumped it and worried about the short-term cost and the long-term availability, and now we’ve got some interesting new options to consider.…
DetailsI’m not spoiling the movie if I tell you that one of the opening scenes of Top Gun: Maverick is a pilot swinging a wrench on an owner-flown piston-powered warbird. That may be enough to make you want to see it, although from the box office numbers so far they don’t need help filling seats.…
DetailsThe Greek poet Archilochus wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” I’m reminded of this when clients ask “Which engine monitor should I buy?” Savvy doesn’t endorse brands or product models, so without naming names, we think the best choice is the one that reliably gives you the information…
DetailsWhen you’re flying and inadvertently run a tank dry, or the cabin door pops open, or you smell smoke, or any similar unexpected threat, the part of your brain that listened to your CFI — train like you fly and fly like you train — goes to work. Your lizard brain also goes to work,…
DetailsWe’ve seen an increase in issues related to induction lately. Is it because many airplanes spent more time grounded because of the virus, and issues are emerging as the hibernation is ending? Or maybe it’s just that for most of our US-based clients, temperatures are warming and taking their toll on clamps, sleeves and gaskets.…
DetailsAre you playing Wordle? It’s fascinating to me how this puzzle has caught on as we look for distractions from that other 5-letter word that begins with C and ends with D and has two non-adjacent vowels. What has this got to do with analysis? Well, sometimes – actually, most of the time – we…
DetailsRecently I saw an ad for a furniture store encouraging me to “kickback in style”. I remember hearing that word a lot as a term for relaxation when I moved to southern California in the early 80s. Before moving, I had read that word a lot in the Chicago papers in regards to unscrupulous public…
Details“A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No, I am the one who knocks!” — Walter White. Sometimes I look at my airplane the way Skyler looks at Walt in that scene. On my recent annual it was a crack in the flange of the muffler can. On the 2-4-6 side of…
DetailsWould you know the symptoms of a broken valve spring in your engine data? We’re pretty good at spotting clogged injectors and fouled plugs from their distinctive patterns. We even developed our FEVA scan for detecting burned valves. Broken valve springs can be, like the song says — as restless as a willow in a…
DetailsIn our last episode, we looked at events that seem to happen randomly, versus something that breaks and stays broken. Let’s call them hiccups. I had too many for one Puzzler, so this is Hiccups Part 2. The annoying thing about hiccups is there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again. Part of you is glad…
DetailsHold your nose and drink a glass of water. Take a deep breath and hold it. Have someone scare you. There are lots of “cures” for the human hiccups. Don’t try these when your airplane hiccups. If you could choose, would you rather deal with something that breaks and stays broken, versus something that seems…
DetailsPilots think of ground effect as the reduced aerodynamic drag that happens under the wing to cushion a landing or help with a short-field takeoff. Analysts, who are also all pilots by the way, think of it as what happens when a poor ground connection for an engine data monitor interferes with collecting the data.…
DetailsI have written about this before, every two years since 2015, and with lots of new clients and some new services since last 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 material is pretty important, too, but…
DetailsI’ll admit that coming up with a clever title is one of the rewards of writing a monthly article. But I didn’t spend a second trying to find a clever or arcane title for this one. I wanted it to be clear what this month’s topic is. The puzzle is which engine data parameters should…
DetailsOf all the anomalies that can quickly grab your attention in-flight, which one is second on your list? Because obviously a fire is at the top of the list. For me it’s a rough runner, but a change in oil pressure is right there with it. The IO-520-K in my Bellanca Viking settles in around…
DetailsI’m in the middle of Walter Isaacson’s new book on Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna. She co-founded CRISPR which is an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Imagine having the tools to make humans immune to viruses or other diseases. We could eliminate baldness. And glasses. And hearing aids. And maybe cancer. All sorts…
DetailsI heard a weathercaster dig up the old “In like a lion, out like a lamb” line recently in reference to the weather in March. As I write this we don’t know if this year’s “out” will be a lamb or something more fierce. But it got me thinking about airplanes named for animals. We’ve…
DetailsPart of the job of engine data analysis is separating relevant, useful information from red herrings. I always wondered why there were two definitions for red herrings; the first is a smoked fish and the second was something meant to distract from the main issue in an argument. What did one have to do with…
DetailsThis is part two of an article about sticky valves. Part one is here. The cliffhanger was a Cessna 182 with a wobbly trace in EGT 4 for the first 14 mins of ground ops. Your homework was to decide if it was a sticky valve or something else. Here’s the whole flight. One of…
DetailsIt has been a while since we took a look at sticky valves. I’m not going to write about why valves stick and how to keep it from happening, although I have a great resource for that. Earlier this year Mike Busch wrote an article for AOPA Pilot called Why Valves Stick. And here’s a…
DetailsRecently a client submitted engine data with an erratic EGT trace. It always makes sense to check the connection first, but in this case it looked like a failing probe. When we reported this, he said that he suspected it failed because he hadn’t been flying much lately because of the virus. Then he asked…
DetailsI live in California. I moved here from Chicago in 1983. It’s probably safe to say that Californians think about earthquakes every day. Most days it’s a fleeting thought then you go about your life. But when you feel a rumble it becomes top of mind again. I’ve been part of conversations that began in…
DetailsI’ll go out on a limb and say that priming the engine is not a precise science. Every POH has instructions, but experience often suggests that some engines like a little more and some a little less. What happens to the excess fuel if the pilot over-primes? Cylinder manufacturers thought of that and included sniffle…
DetailsThanks to the virus, I think we’re all logging more flight simulator time lately. I was talking with a game-designer friend about sims and haptics. To save some of you running to the dictionary, haptics are kinesthetic cues given by electronic devices. Like when your phone buzzes if the ringer is muted. Or when the…
DetailsMaybe it’s just a coincidence that we use the same word for a piece of silicone that directs cooling air over an aircraft engine – and a state of bewilderment. In the world of sound it’s also used to describe the box that contains a speaker. Maybe it’s just cruel irony at work. As the Danish…
DetailsI was talking with a friend recently and he said “I understand it intellectually, but I’m not sure I’ll ever grok it”. I haven’t heard that word in years, maybe as far back as reading Heinlein in high school. (I was more of an Asimov fan in those days.) But it got me thinking about…
DetailsMuch of the award-winning advertising from the last several decades was produced by Weiden + Kennedy. As they grew and pushed the creative envelope, their motto became “Fail Harder” – if your failures are small you’re not trying hard enough. As pilots and airplane owners it would be nice if nothing ever failed. Since that’s…
DetailsI’ll be honest. Writing this month’s column about engine data as thousands continue to die from the virus seemed – trivial. Then two things came to mind. First, you’re probably reading this to get a short break from the news. Second, so much of the story – the hockey-stick spike in unemployment, the colored maps,…
DetailsIf you can have latitude in your attitude, then a properly-timed set of mags can have – magnetude. I guess it can have magnitude, too, but this column’s about the good, bad and ugly of mags and ignition spark. The EGT pattern of a perfect mag check can be a beautiful thing. But the analysis…
DetailsThe flip side of a cylinder running too lean is one that runs too rich. If it’s too lean the usual suspect is an injector clog for those with injectors or an induction leak for carbureted engines. When it’s too rich it’s often because of something all too common – an injector misplaced into the…
DetailsYep, I’m angling for the award for best mis-appropriation of a Latin maxim. The real phrase – de gustibus… – translates literally to “regarding tastes, it should not be disputed” which in common usage has become “there’s no accounting for taste.” If we took it literally, a lot of film, music, food and other critics…
DetailsThe Estonian physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck died a couple of generations before the Wright Brothers demonstrated powered flight. Each December I remember to thank the brothers from Dayton for their courage and persistence that eventually led to the gift of aviation to mankind, and from now on I’ll be including Herr Seebeck. Because it’s his…
DetailsSome words just mean what they mean and that’s all you get. Some words give you options. Scramble can be a verb or a noun. It can mean to order fighter jets into the air immediately, or a way to cook eggs, or a disordered mixture of things. When we confuse or mask radio transmissions…
DetailsLast month I said I would write about this so let’s end the suspense. I’ve been saving data for well over a year. I noticed this pattern before that, but started saving examples in mid 2018. So what is it? In the spirit of good Puzzling, I’ll provide three examples and you can take a…
DetailsIt’s that time in the baseball season when teams calculate their magic number – the combination of their wins and losses by others that will clinch the pennant. Computer programmers use the term for something unrelated to baseball. Either way, it seems like a mis-appropriation of the word “magic”. When I think of magic it’s…
DetailsWhen it comes to troubleshooting issues with an aircraft engine, it’s probably safe to say that any engine data is better than no data at all. Data from cruise flights can tell us about the airplane’s normal operations, and when we have enough data from an airframe & engine cohort we can generate report cards…
DetailsI 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 material is pretty…
DetailsThe US stock market volatility index is sometimes called the fear index. Usually when the VIX is spiking to new highs, investors are bailing out and other indexes are tumbling. We had one of these events last last year – after a jittery October and November, December saw a “blow-off” top, and when the last…
DetailsI grew up in a river town – Cincinnati – then moved to a lake town – Chicago – and then to an ocean town – Encinitas, CA just north of San Diego. I just started listening to David McCullough’s new book The Pioneers and was happy to hear it begin on the banks of…
DetailsThese days it’s call throwing shade. When I came up, good jazz musicians had a nice-but-direct way of telling wanna be jazz musicians that they weren’t up to the task – “don’t give up your day gig.” Dr. Graeme Smart has a day gig – he’s the Principal Scientist for New Zealand’s National Institute of…
DetailsI have been flying my Bellanca Viking for 29 years now. I have had two unexplained events – one electrical and one combustion – both in day VMC. I was alone for both. The electrical event was on approach to a central California airport with a tower. I had deployed the first notch of flaps…
DetailsPhoebe Snow’s recording of “No Regrets” is on one of my playlists, and I can’t hear the song without thinking of the Milky Way ad where the distracted tattoo artist gives her customer something to – uh, regert. Sometimes engine data will give us something that obvious, but more often we have to dig a…
DetailsThey say what goes around comes around. As the new year arrived and I began my 5th year of writing these Puzzlers, I wondered what I could do to keep things interesting and informative. You the reader and I, acting as your agent scrubbing the uploaded data for good candidates, are at the mercy of…
DetailsIf zero tolerance means we won’t tolerate anything but a zero, then I guess zero zero tolerance means we won’t tolerate any zeros. Usually a zero on an engine data monitor isn’t a good thing unless it has an integer or a decimal point in front of it. 40, 300, 2700, 14.0 – all ok.…
DetailsIn most of the Northern Hemisphere it’s the time of year to think about icing. If your airplane is certified and equipped for FIKI – flight into known icing – an encounter with ice isn’t the emergency that it is for the rest of us. When an engine data probe fails in flight, most of…
DetailsI never had the guts to do it, but I sure thought about it more than once. Maybe you’ve done it or thought about it. You know – you’re in a mandatory meeting about some new company policy or initiative and the presenter is droning on from a pamphlet – or worse, a PowerPoint that…
DetailsSometimes when I see something odd in real-time engine data during a flight, I can almost hear the voice of Vic Perrin saying “There is nothing wrong with your TV set. We are controlling transmission. We will control the numbers you see. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the…
DetailsThe Farmer’s Almanac says that the phrase Dog Days wasn’t originally about canines panting in the heat, it was about the appearance of Sirius the Dog Star and its reminder to ancient Egyptians about the annual flooding of the Nile. I like the dog days because a clear night sky gives you good views of…
DetailsWhen guitar strings break there’s no lingering doubt. When an old-style incandescent light bulb fails you might get a bright flash before the darkness, or maybe just the darkness. Either way, no doubt. These are instant, unconditional failures. Then there are failures that are harder to recognize because they evolve over time, like an attitude indicator…
DetailsOkay I’ll admit it. The first time someone showed me the selective attention video – the one where the gorilla walks through the teams passing basketballs – the setup was that there was a really nice prize if you could count the exact number of passes by the white team, and an even better prize…
DetailsLast October I mentioned Eastern Airlines flight 401, which crashed into the Everglades in 1972 because all three crew members were fixated on a failed landing light. I first read about the importance of that flight, and so many others, by reading books and columns by Richard L. Collins, who we lost in April. I…
DetailsStrong 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 phone to fetch a number and type it into a webpage, I remind myself…
DetailsI 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 of a few weeks. There’s always one upset of a…
DetailsSometimes 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 from an Avidyne with a 6 sec sample…
DetailsOne 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 program from the point of view of Mission Controller Gene Kranz. Despite…
Detailsby 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 could see MAP…
DetailsIn 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 you’d be inclined to dismiss. When we perform engine data analysis, we strive for…
DetailsNTSB 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 flight and the goal of engine longevity, bogus data can create…
DetailsAssume – 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. When the data looks good for all parameters, we assume that all sensors…
DetailsThere’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 problem. Once all those suggestions have been met with “yeah, we tried that”…
DetailsI 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 material is pretty…
DetailsOne of the first steps of engine data analysis is evaluating the reliability of the data. In recent Puzzlers we’ve seen probes that didn’t fail spectacularly, they just kept sending data that was almost believable, and could – if you saw it in real-time, cause you to adjust your flight plan, or – if you…
DetailsFlying is full of great and memorable sounds. I’ll never forget how quiet the cockpit was after lifting off for my first solo – compared to hours of hearing my CFI issue verbal corrections or way-to-gos. It was just the engine and the air. I can still remember the first time Rare Bear flew by at Reno…
DetailsIf there were a TV show where I could watch A&Ps, or just plain owners, swinging wrenches on airplanes, I’d probably watch. I’d at least give it a look. Ice Pilots and Flying Wild Alaska and Airplane Repo tend more toward the challenges of aviating and making a living than the challenge of torquing a nut you can’t…
DetailsHow can rational numbers be so irrational? Actually, upon examination what we discover is that there’s usually a perfectly logical explanation for why an engine parameter is displaying its pattern. Even the impossible jumps from a failing probe have a logical explanation behind them. Of course, that’s easy to say from the quiet comfort of…
DetailsSomeone sent me a link this week for a video of a controlled blast triggering an avalanche. That started me thinking about some of my favorite cinematic explosions: Denzel Washington blowing up an oil tanker in “The Equalizer”, Jeremy Renner’s adrenaline-addicted EOD character inside the kill zone in “The Hurt Locker”, pretty much any Bruce Willis,…
DetailsAs 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…
DetailsCorroboration – 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…
DetailsI’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…
DetailsRecently 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…
DetailsLike 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.…
DetailsIn 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…
DetailsFranklin 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…
DetailsI 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…
DetailsEvery 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…
DetailsIf 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…
DetailsWhat gets your attention when you’re flying? Obviously traffic, terrain and weather get your attention, but let’s narrow it down to events or trends in the engine data that would cause you to consider a precautionary landing. High CHT, no or very low CHT, ditto those for EGT and TIT for sure, especially if the data is corroborated by rough…
DetailsI saw the phrase “fueling speculation” in a political context this week and wondered how those two words became attached in our lexicon. Why didn’t “provoking” or “prompting” or “eliciting” catch on the way “fueling” did? Then I opened my first SavvyAnalysis chart of the day and found myself doing exactly that – speculating about…
DetailsThe 14th century friar William of Ockham would probably cringe to know that his lofty and articulate principle “Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate” has been boiled down to “Keep it Simple.” The Latin translates to “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity”, but in the Information Age it is usually applied to shave away (using…
DetailsFirst some old business. In the November Puzzler I used data that depicted intermittent and unusual patterns in EGT and CHT 5. I was happy to be able to include two pictures provided by our client — one showing the rocker arm on the engine lined up off-center to the valve stem, and the other showing the…
DetailsOne of the classic lines in Casablanca comes from Claude Rains playing Captain Renault: “Round up the usual suspects.” In engine monitor analysis, when we see an EGT or CHT diverge from normalcy, it’s often the result of a clogged injector, a rogue spark plug or an induction leak. It could also be bogus data from a failing probe or…
DetailsFor this Halloween Puzzler I chose three charts. The first was trick-y, and finding the source of the problem was a treat. The next one is a little scary, and the last one is downright spooky. Let’s get started. First up is the Right engine of a Baron 55, a Continental IO-550-E. Here’s the whole 40 minute flight, with…
DetailsFor this back-to-school Puzzler I chose two very different scenarios. Let’s apply our analytical skills and see if we can solve them. First up is a normally aspirated SR-22 with a Continental IO-550-N. This is a test profile flight, with a series of GAMI sweeps followed by a lean-of-peak mag check. Here’s the whole flight,…
DetailsWhile channel surfing recently I tuned into the opening scene of 12 Angry Men. It had been years since I had seen it, so I decided to give it a go. It’s not a flashy movie, it’s in black-and-white, and except for the final scene on the courthouse plaza, the movie takes place in one small…
DetailsThe web says that big data is a catch-all phrase for data sets that are so large that traditional processing applications are inadequate. Even though Savvy Analysis is just approaching its 3rd birthday, let’s call it a traditional processing application. On my last cross-country flight, my passenger was a web developer, and as we scanned…
DetailsThe comedians are fond of saying “timing is everything”. I think the quality of the material is pretty important, too, but I guess their point is that bad timing can ruin good material, and that comedy is a performance art. You might expect an article about timing from the analysis side of Savvy to be…
DetailsIt’s wedding season. When my wife hosts a wedding shower, she organizes a game. She puts small kitchen items into brown paper lunch bags – one per bag – and ties a ribbon around each one. Each guest ties the ribbon around their neck and hangs a bag down their back. The other guests feel…
DetailsLast week I heard an oldie but goodie. A couple of veteran pilots were talking to a new pilot about flying single engine planes over rough terrain at night. One of the high-timers said “If the engine quits, you pick a spot, turn on the landing light and if you don’t like what you see…
DetailsSpring training is about to wrap up, and opening day is almost here. Last week a friend and I made our annual pilgrimage to Glendale, AZ to immerse ourselves in baseball. Four games in 45 hours. At least in Arizona, spring training and GA are good neighbors. The White Sox/Dodger park is next to Glendale,…
DetailsFlying is full of acronyms. GUMP, ADS-B, BFR, NTSB, ASRS, AOPA, EAA, NBAA, GA, WOXOF, NORDO, GPS, ILS, VOR, FARs, the 6 T’s – the list goes on. Add online chatting and texting and it’s almost TMI. In engine data analysis we have our own acronyms, and the last page of the Savvy analysis report…
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