Points for Pilots

When we started flying four decades ago, we asked friend Jack, a very experienced pilot, aircraft mechanic, and computer science guru, "What are the odds of an engine failure in flight?" He responded, "About once in your lifetime." We just had that rare event and hope it is the only one for the remainder of our flying career. Here is the story. The Flight Departing at 6 am from the Aero Country airport north of Dallas, TX, a strong tailwind pushes us north to the Lee’s Summit airport near Kansas City, MO in four hours. The new carburetors that we installed a few weeks ago on the Rotax 912 engine of our Zenith 601 HDS have cut fuel consumption. We burn just 12.2 gal in those four hours. We refuel with 91 octane Mogas, help another pilot figure out the self service refueling system, and take off. It’s less than three hours to our final destination, the Boone Municipal airport north of Des Moines, IA. Perfect weather, a strong tailwind, a purring engine. What could pos...

You discover that an exhaust pipe of your engine has failed. For example, the pipe has broken apart, going from something like this . . . . . . to these two pieces.  Failed exhaust pipe This isn't difficult to fix. You get a replacement for the broken-off segment, cut the pipe appropriately, and weld the two pieces together. For the fitting and initially tack-welding, you install the two pieces on the airplane, secure them in place, and tack-weld them together. You remove the resulting single piece, carefully weld what so far has just been tacked together, and get a finished piece that is guaranteed to fit. But what do you do if the airplane is at a remote airport and you must create the repaired pipe off-site? We recently had that situation, involving a looming engine failure ; it was a first for us during 40 years of flying. Here is our six-step solution. Step 1 You first tack-weld together the two existing pieces so that a one-piece pipe with correct shape results. Of course, th...