Waypoints: Trying to find trust

I needed to slow the old airplane down, but needed to keep the power high in what was Hour Two of the newly overhauled engine’s life. The overhauler’s recommendation was to alternate between 65 percent and 75 percent power for that second hour as part of the break-in process. I continued eastward, remaining low and in the bumps in order to maintain that high manifold pressure—attempting to do the right thing for the big investment I had just made.

I was monitoring the engine closely: fuel flow and pressure, cylinder and exhaust gas temperatures, rpm, manifold pressure, oil pressure and temperature. And, of course, listening and feeling for anything unusual.

Really, what I was doing was attempting to build trust in this young engine. Would it carry me, my family, friends, and colleagues safely for the next couple of thousand hours as the previous run of the engine had?

That previous run lasted some 18 years and by my estimation nearly 300,000 nautical miles (see “Ownership: How an Airplane is Like a Kitchen,” p. 91). By the way, that’s a trip to the moon and halfway back. The propeller had delivered some 330 million revolutions during that time period. Aside from one finicky exhaust valve, all of it was trouble free from an engine core standpoint.

I had a lot of trust in that engine. We flew more than 100 photo missions—fast and slow with everything from tiny trainers and warbirds to flashy business jets off its wing. The engine carried colleagues and me on 18 trips to EAA AirVenture—across Lake Michigan—and to dozens of states. I flew it solo to the Bahamas once. My family and I explored everything from Chicago’s lakeshore to Maine’s rocky seacoast and Florida’s Disney World behind that engine, with lots of stop-offs all along. It’s landed back at Beech Field in Wichita, where the airframe made its maiden flight in late 1971, and we’ve prowled around the Midwest from Texas to Minnesota—even up into Canada a few times. We’ve plowed through challenging weather and soared over amazing vistas together. Yes, I literally trusted it with my life.

But somewhere along the way, in the back of my mind, the trust began to erode just a little as I pushed past the published time between overhauls of 1,700 hours. I know the engine can’t read the calendar or the tachometer time. But I can and I wondered, how long is long enough? At what point have I gotten out of this engine what I paid for it? When does it owe me nothing?

I have lots of aviation friends. Some with expertise. All with opinions. Some thought I was crazy for flying an hour beyond TBO. Others wondered why I would question an engine that was still running great. Thanks to help and advice from some of those expert friends, I was monitoring the internals carefully with regular digital borescopes, compression checks, oil trend analysis, and oil consumption. Everything was fine.

But there was still that nagging question of how far is far enough? As the tach rolled past 500 hours beyond TBO even some of my “keep on truckin’” friends began to suggest that maybe it was time to make some plans. So I did. I began looking around at overhaul shops, cylinder manufacturers, and shops that might take the engine out and put it back in for me.

I was extolling the wonders of my engine longevity to a trusted friend and aviation expert at AirVenture 2019. He smiled thoughtfully and basically said, “Don’t be that guy who goes too far and ends up in a cornfield, or worse.”

I’d been putting money aside each flight hour for the past 18 years, so funds for the overhaul were available—although I had plenty of other ideas for ways to use that dough. But last September I felt like I received a clear sign that it was time. A bird strike punched a small hole in the leading edge of the right wing, surrounded by a good-sized dent. The repair would require several weeks of downtime. Rather than risk another prolonged grounding some months later for an engine and prop overhaul, I decided to get all of it taken care of together.

So a few days before Christmas I handed the keys to a technician at Royal Aircraft Services in Hagerstown, Maryland; patted the airplane on the spinner; and walked away.

A few weeks turned into a few months (thank you, COVID-19—not) and I finally got the call that it was done. I fired the money cannon and made my way to Hagerstown for the pickup. And so that’s how I ended up sprinting across northern Maryland on a bumpy spring day behind a shiny “new” engine, trying to build trust once again.

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