AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2024 - 95

RUDDER & WRENCH
Resources, Other Resources, Borescope
Initiative. To encourage the widest possible
adoption of these standardized
methods, techniques, and practices for
cylinder borescope inspection, we decided
to make all this available at no cost to any
mechanic, shop, or maintenance-involved
owner who wishes to use it.
Inspection protocol
Our first challenge was to create a standardized
cylinder borescope inspection
protocol so borescope images would be
obtained in a consistent fashion from one
inspection to the next regardless of which
mechanic (or owner) was manipulating
the scope and would capture everything
needed to assess cylinder condition. For
this, I turned to Savvy's borescope inspection
guru, Dave Pasquale, A&P/IA. Dave
is director of maintenance at Pasquale
Aviation in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, as
well as a veteran member of Savvy's technical
team. Pasquale has done pioneering
work in piston aircraft engine borescopy
and is one of the foremost experts on this
subject in the industry.
Over many years of doing these inspections,
Pasquale developed a protocol of 11
specific views for each cylinder to be captured
in a specific order:
* Piston crown (at bottom of stroke).
* Exhaust valve head (valve closed).
* Intake valve head (valve closed).
* Exhaust valve seat and face (valve wide
open).
* Exhaust valve stem (valve wide open).
* Intake valve seat and face (valve wide
open).
* Intake valve stem (valve wide open).
* Cylinder wall at 12 o'clock.
* Cylinder wall at 3 o'clock.
* Cylinder wall at 6 o'clock.
* Cylinder wall at 9 o'clock.
Now, 11 views of each cylinder may
seem like a lot-and it is-but it's what's
needed to cover all the bases. After a little
practice it takes the technician less
than five minutes per cylinder to obtain
these views. An inspection of a six-cylinder
engine (66 images) should take about a
half-hour to do (if the upper cowling is off
and the top spark plugs are out).
To keep all these images well-organized
and ensure each image file was easily
Cylinder borescope inspection
illustrated checklist.
shows Pasquale performing the 11-image
inspection of a cylinder, demonstrating how
he positions the crankshaft and manipulates
the scope to obtain each view, and showing
what each of the captured images should
look like.
Because mechanics like to have written
guidance, we also developed a five-page
checklist that describes each of the images
in the protocol, explains how to capture
each one, and includes photos of what each
identifiable as to which view of which cylinder
it is, we came up with a standardized
file naming convention. For example, the
image of the piston crown of the number
5 cylinder would be named " 5-piston.jpg "
and the image of the number-2 cylinder
wall in the 12 o'clock position would be
named " 2-wall-12.jpg " and so forth.
Training video and checklist
To help technicians master the technique of
performing this sort of comprehensive cylinder
inspection, we created a training video
aimed primarily at A&P mechanics (but also
of interest to maintenance-involved aircraft
owners). The lion's share of this video
image should look like. The checklist also
includes details of the recommended filenaming
convention for these images.
Image repository and
report generator
So, you or your mechanic have shot a whole
bunch of borescope images of the cylinders
of your engine, hopefully conforming to the
11-image-per-cylinder protocol. Now, what
are you going to do with them? Savvy's
web-based platform has been extended
to provide a cloud-based borescope image
repository that is available at no cost. You'll
need to create a free Savvy account, and
then you're good to go.
The borescope image repository provides
a place for all your borescope images
to be uploaded, tagged for identification,
stored, organized, analyzed, annotated,
archived, and compared. If your image
files are named in accordance with the
recommended file-naming convention,
then you can drag and drop them onto
the upload screen in one fell swoop and
the software will automatically tag them
by cylinder number and view. Any image
files with non-conforming names can be
tagged manually. All the images associated
with a particular inspection are organized
as a named " image set " and the repository
allows you to upload and archive an unlimited
number of such image sets.
The platform also includes a report generator
that produces elegant reports in PDF
format suitable for printing and incorporating
into the aircraft maintenance records.
This can be used in two different ways. If
you have a free Savvy account, then you or
your mechanic can analyze and annotate
the images in your image set before generating
the inspection report. Alternatively, if
your aircraft is enrolled in SavvyAnalysis,
SavvyQA, or SavvyMx, you can click on a
" request analysis " button and have one of
Savvy's professional analysts analyze and
annotate your images and generate the
report for you.
What's next?
We hope this borescope initiative will gain
wide industry acceptance by shops and
mechanics (and maintenance-involved
owners) who perform inspections of piston
aircraft engines.
AOPA PILOT / April 2024
95
AOPA Pilot Magazine - April 2024

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