AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011 - 104

NEVERAGAIN
By Friday the airplane was fixed (or so I thought) and by the following weekend we were ready to fly again. This time it was lunch at Harris Ranch, a small airport next to a truck stop on Interstate 5 about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. My wife, daughter, and youngest son were on board. Preflight was uneventful, runup was normal, and takeoff seemed fine. However, during the climbing 270 departure—standard noise abatement procedure at Hayward—as I reduced the throttle to climb power, the

mixture and manifold pressure became strangely uncoordinated. I struggled to get things adjusted properly and continued the climb. At cruise altitude I tried to set the engine controls, but again things didn’t seem right. Then there was that strange feeling again that the engine vibrations weren’t normal. “Get there at all cost” set in. I didn’t want to disappoint my daughter, who was to meet her boyfriend at Harris Ranch. I convinced myself everything was really fine. When it was time to leave for home, the engine started fine. I started on the

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runup checklist: right mag, then left mag. When I switched the left mag the engine almost stopped. I tried a few adjustments, such as leaning the mixture to see if there was carbon around the plugs, but the second time I switched to the left mag the engine did stop. The left magneto had completely failed, and it had probably failed just after takeoff in Hayward. It had very probably been slowly failing since Fullerton the previous weekend. Why had I not simply returned to Hayward, put the airplane on the ground, and had a mechanic check it over? Now I was stuck more than 120 miles from home at an airport with no services other than a gas pump. We stayed overnight, and the following morning I found a mechanic at Visalia who was willing to come over. We left the airplane in his good hands and got a ride home. I think this was the first time I realized how far away from home you can get very quickly in a small aircraft. The fight was 56 minutes; the drive home was more than three hours. When the mechanic called two days later he said the left magneto had failed because the wrong parts had been installed at the last overhaul. When the right mag was stripped, it too had the wrong parts. They had both lasted about 300 hours since the overhaul, but apparently had both been on the verge of failure for quite a while. Two weeks, and a few dollars later, Speedbird was back in its hangar at Hayward and running fine. This story might not be quite as exciting as some of the “Never Again” stories, but I learned a lot. First, don’t be afraid to call pan-pan or mayday. There are lots of folks out there who are willing and able to help you when you have a problem. I also learned that when something doesn’t feel right, it very likely isn’t right. Put the airplane on the ground and get a good mechanic to check it out. Don’t let the mission seduce you into continuing when things aren’t right. Andy Clark, AOPA 3950274, is a commercial pilot with single and multiengine instrument ratings.

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AOPA PILOT •

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OCTOBER 2011

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - October 2011