Fire around anything in aviation is one of my greatest fears. I’ve had some experience in this area, so I’m always on my soap box speaking out to anything relating to preventing fires in places where they shouldn’t be. If one isn’t aware of these areas of concern and...
Lately, we’ve been performing a higher number of various engine upgrades. There are several reasons for this, but one airframe modification common to these engine upgrades is the installation of the Summit Aviation six-point engine mount STC. This isn’t a new STC, by...
Most of the new design high performance piston singles are based on the Continental tuned induction 550 series engine. Whether normally aspirated, turbo normalized or fully turbocharged, they are all rated at 310 horsepower. The previous generation of high performance...
Technical items that get my attention as fodder for articles are usually those that I anticipate a fair number of readers may experience. Sometimes the subject matter is very uncommon but has some interesting component that appeals to the aviation geek inside me. In...
When I speak at various events, one of my favorite show and tell items is a magneto with an impulse coupling attached. It’s a great visual aid which allows for a very useful demonstration of an ignition system during engine start. More importantly, it demonstrates why...
I get to attend almost the entire week at Oshkosh, known these days as Airventure. Some friends and I share a house for the week and use it to enjoy some respite from the somewhat intense activities on the Airventure grounds during the day. I walk six or more miles...
Early detection I happen to be very light complected, complete with freckles and sandy reddish hair, so excessive use of sunscreen is just a normal part of life. They say “you can’t swim outside your gene pool” which, for me, means that I get to make visits to the...
I can’t give a count of how many batteries I’ve installed over the last four or five decades, but it’s a bunch. Each new battery arrives with instructions for initial servicing, which I read way back in the day and assumed that the batteries hadn’t changed, so the...
Since the beginning of powered flight, aviators have worked to find ways to deal with the effects of higher altitude flying. The rarified air up there creates challenges for airfoils, engines, and people. The results of these efforts are applied to almost every...
As pilots, we all learned about the various forms of ice that might try to kill us if we flew in certain dangerous conditions. We learned about the dangers of attempting to fly with just a little frost on the wings. Some of us learned to cycle our landing gear a...
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