The Savvy Aviator

By now, I suspect most AVweb readers know that I am a strong advocate of overhauling piston aircraft engines “on condition” rather than “on time.” I have always considered it both irrational and uneconomical to tear down an otherwise healthy engine just because it has attained some arbitrary number of hours or years in service.In […]

Recently, I heard from an aircraft owner who had just discovered something worrisome during an owner-assisted annual: Great questions!Let me start by saying that this owner was wise to ask for a second opinion at this point. That’s always a smart move any time you have a question or concern about the advice you’re getting, […]

The Cessna 340 had just leveled off at its requested cruising altitude of FL240 when all of a sudden the left engine started running rough. The engine was rough enough to really get the attention of the airplane’s seasoned owner-pilot.Being a maintenance-savvy sort, the pilot attempted to troubleshoot the problem. His first thought was that […]

This is a story about Cessnas, but please don’t hold that against me because the lessons learned are applicable to all aircraft makes and models.Years ago, I used to travel throughout the country putting on technical seminars for the Cessna Pilots Association (CPA) for owners of various Cessna models, together with John Frank, executive director […]

A funny thing happened as I was finishing up the annual inspection on my 1979 Cessna T310R back in March of 2000. The inspection was complete, and I had gotten off pretty light … John, the IA, didn’t find all that much wrong with the airplane. What discrepancies had been found were now all resolved. […]

We’ve been doing it since our earliest days as student pilots. Now that we’re aircraft owners, we still do it as part of our standard preflight ritual. But are we doing it right?It turns out that there’s a lot more to checking the engine’s oil dipstick properly than just making sure that the oil level […]

A funny thing happened to me on a coast-to-coast trip in my Cessna T310R from California to the East coast. I was headed from my home base in Santa Maria to teach a weekend seminar in Frederick, Md., and then to Atlanta to teach another seminar the following weekend.I first became aware of the problem […]

Recently I heard from a fellow Cessna 310 owner, obviously frustrated, who had been searching for a good shop to perform an owner-assisted annual on his airplane: “It’s getting harder all the time to find a shop that will allow any owner involvement in an annual inspection. The ones I’ve found that will allow it […]

In 2002, I did something unfortunate: pulled a perfectly good cylinder off of one of the engines of my Cessna T310R. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have touched the cylinder. But at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing.It was the usual story. I had just downed […]

I‘ve had wonderful luck with piston aircraft engines throughout my 37 years as an aircraft owner. All the engines on my airplanes have made TBO with minimal maintenance along the way, and in recent years they’ve gone well beyond TBO.For decades, I was convinced that the secret of my success was the fact that I […]