Ownership

Lately, my maintenance management company SAMM has been receiving an increas-ing number of requests to oversee pre-buy examinations on aircraft ranging from Skylanes to Cirruses to Bonanzas to Golden Eagles. Now, I’ve been an aircraft owner for more than 40 years, but in all that time I’ve only bought three airplanes. One of those was […]

This article originally appeared in Light Plane Maintenance, Sep. 2007. Spark plugs. Those pricey little fire-starters screwed into each cylinder can tell you much about the health of your engine and perhaps about your operating technique. Like anything else, learning to remove, read and reinstall spark plugs takes some knowledge and practice, but it’s something […]

Recently, my aircraft management company SAMMwas managing the annual inspection of a client’s piston-powered, single-engine airplane at a well-known maintenance facility in Texas. The inspection found very little wrong with the airplane, and it looked like the annual would be completed quickly and inexpensively. Then, quite unexpectedly, the IA responsible for the annual went to […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Consumer magazine, Nov. 2007. Let’s say you need a part for your airplane — not a maintenance item like a Brackett foam filter or a spin-on oil filter, but something more exotic, say an elevator trim tab or a new wingtip. The immediate impulse is to order it new […]

This article originally appeared in Kitplanes, April 2008. Those of you who attended that big airshow in the state of Wisconsin a year ago might have noticed a curious juxtaposition. If you had started a soft-serve ice cream before dropping by the Van’s Aircraft booth to see the RV-12 prototype, you probably would not be […]

On a winter Friday evening a few years ago, a Texas-based aircraft owner loaded three family members into his Baron and flew to Kansas City to attend a weekend function. One of the aircraft’s vacuum pumps failed over Oklahoma. Upon landing at Kansas City Downtown Airport (MKC), the owner asked the FBO on the field […]

This article appeared in Light Plane Maintenance, Oct. 2008. The most important reason to have a multi-probe engine-diagnostic system is the in-flight diagnostic capability that such a system brings. If the pilot knows and understands the system, a multi-probe cylinder head temperature/exhaust gas temperature (CHT/EGT) system can serve as an unparalleled “early warning” device, pinpointing […]

This article originally appeared in Aviation Consumer magazine, May 2007. Utilitarian to the core, we aren’t impressed by flashy instrument-panel work. And by this, we mean panels decked out in custom colors and patterns that blend with a pricey leather interior and a toney exterior paint job. But we’re not crazy about the 1970s-style Royalite […]

Under the FARs, performing maintenance is the job of an A&P mechanic or FAA-approved repair station, but managing maintenance is the owner’s job. In essence, the FAA looks at each aircraft owner as the Director of Maintenance (DoM) of a one-aircraft aviation department. Unfortunately, few owners know how to do this important job, and most […]

This article originally appeared in Kitplanes, Dec. 2007. Launching from the softly rippling surface of Lake Seminole in St. Petersburg, Fla., felt slightly like what a stone must feel like after a youngster’s sidearm sling sends it skipping across the water. There’s a little bounce, a slight skip, then another. But, unlike the rock, the […]