Creampuff

yr right

I’ll list a few of the (many) mistakes I’ve made and some of the (many) misconceptions under which I’ve laboured, during the 30 or so years I’ve been trusting my life to piston engines in aircraft that I operate (at least to the extent that I can remember them).

1. The leaner the mixture the hotter the engine.

2. Lead lubricates valves.

3. The vibration from an engine during the leaning process is ‘lean misfire’ due to very hot exhaust gas temperatures.

4. Setting 2500 RPM / 25 inches manifold pressure in the climb will make the engine cooler than 2700 RPM and wide open throttle (e.g. 28 inches after take off).

5. 25 degrees C rich of peak is a good place to run an engine.

6 to double digits. Innumerable imprudent operational decisions that were fortunately saved by other slices of the swiss cheese not having aligned holes. I think they call this one: Being human.

I’d be interested to know some of the mistakes you’ve made and the misconceptions under which you’ve discovered you were labouring, over your 34 years’ experience as a LAME.

What were the circumstances in which you took a step back and thought: “Hang on sec’, I have this all wrong.”

Progressive

Cockney Steve,
I was not going to contribute to this thread any longer since it turned into a P***ing match between Yr Right, Creampuff and Jaba but your accusations that I am on a retainer have forced me to respond.

1) I am not and will never be on a retainer to promote any particular aviation product without declaring it first. I will happily fit spark-plugs of any approved brand. the only company that has ever asked me to promote their product to my customers (tempest oil filters) were refused.

2)I am not supporting one brand of plugs, I am supporting testing Tempest plugs to tempest specs and leaving champion ones alone since champion say the test is not accurate for their plugs PERIOD.

3)I do not support Yr Right's stance on LOP: LOP is not a problem when done by the right people with the right equipment. Unfortunately most of the pilot community do not fit into that field. Thus we teach new pilots to fly ROP and the right ones get motivated and go to Jaba's course to learn LOP.

4)And this is where I do that aussie "Spade is a Spade" thing. Cockney: Your post regarding sparkplugs on cars 40 years ago and the installation of early carbon pile resistors has as much relevance to this debate on testing the resistance of modern aircraft plugs as the you tube video on cats I just watched on the other tab. And your Source "a European aviator online" doesn't stand much credibility especially since failure to start has never been a symptom of high resistance from champion plugs. The most likely source of his fail to start was the high speed of the new starter bypassing the impulse coupling in the magneto - common on 0-200 engines and other small low compression jobs.
If champion really just a bunch of jokers out to sell plugs then they would have been the FIRST to accept a need for resistor testing.

5) Lead Sled: I cannot agree more that this disinformation starts at TAFE and is backed up on the hangar floor. i have dedicated a good part of my career to studying and to be at the top of my trade and am now working part time to put that knowledge back into the education system but there is a long way to go to make it right.

As for your governor over speed with no repairs required: Assuming your engine was rated to 2575 RPM then your LAME is one of those who needs some education: More than 10% overspeed = bulk strip.

http://www.lycoming.com/Portals/0/te...0Overspeed.pdf

I have done a few inspections on overspeeded 540's from robbo's and they are often not pretty inside.

Thats my last two cents.

Walter Atkinson

I feel like I've stepped pin the "Way-back Machine" and am reliving the internet conversations from 18 years ago in the US.

Yr Right, you're saying a lot of things that I once said… but, through intensive research have learned were dead wrong. That was a painful experience but a worthwhile one.

Remember, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the physics are everywhere the same…. SO show us some hard data to support your positions. I can show you 2 ½ days of hard data to support the misguided nature of the notions you are presenting. You are making valid observations but assigning improper causality.

So much of what you have posted is simply at odds with the known science that I don't know where to start or have the time or bandwidth to respond.

BTW, I hold the ATP, CFII, MEI and A&P ratings… and, once upon a time I was just as misinformed as you seem to be. Please understand, I do not equate uninformed with ignorant. It has been suggested where you can become informed as to the factual science. It's up to you to follow through.

Jabawocky

Progressive, you have written a very common misconception about LOP operations and just what an APS course is designed to teach.

I do not for one minute blame you for this. I do not blame yr right for having some very strong beliefs that are scientifically incorrect. It is the entire system of education that is to blame. So let me explain, which as you would agree can be difficult in just a post on a forum. You will need to trust my information here. I have no reason to add to misleading myths.

Lean of Peak operations have been around since Charles Lindbergh flew over the Atlantic. I do not think there was any AuRacle or JPI gear on board that flight.

I can teach anyone to fly safely LOP in under 5 minutes, more like 2-3 minutes including a briefing and demonstration. Mid 2013 during the Aust Womens Pilots conference in Hervey Bay, I took Kreisha Ballantyne, the editor from Australian Pilot flying over Fraser Island. I asked her to fly, and we departed YHBA climbed to 1500' and head rougly towards Lake Mackenzie. Once at 1500 and already over water, I gave a briefing on how to do it, with her eyes closed (1-2 seconds) she did it. This was all done and dusted before we reached the Island shores. She nailed it first go. Simple as that, even a girl can do it we joked! We did not need or use anything of the EMS, no lean find functions, nothing more than the human sensor pack and a 1-2 minute briefing. She did it so well I said I guarantee you are around 70-80dF LOP, so we used the EMS to prove this by carefully (for accuracy sake not engine concern) sneaking up on peak from the Lean side to find it. BINGO! Spot on she was.

So, who needs the engine monitor and a massive amount of training by comparison you ask? Simply the ROP pilot. Especially at higher power settings. There is no way possible of knowing without instrumentation where to operate on the Rich side of Peak. That is safely at an appropriate level ROP. Without an EMS you can't tell 200dF ROP from 75dF ROP. The reason most engines survive so long with mixture mismanagement on the rich side is because it mostly happens at low enough powers to not do harm. It is wasteful and filthy on internals, but that is another matter.

To understand this point further, let my describe the story of two pilots, two identical say TNIO550 powered Bonanza's. They take their planes to a diligent and hard working LAME like yr right, 100hrly done and the injectors have been out and cleaned. The LOP pilot specifically asked for this not to be done but the LAME was being thorough and ignored this while the ROP pilot did not care. They both had the same piece of thread from a shop rag inadvertently introduced to an injector during reinstallation (not as uncommon as you think).

The ROP pilot jumps in and blasts off home, full rich and away, running happily, for another 100 hours.

The LOP pilot jumps in climbs out, does a BMP or sets LOP in whichever way he normally does and it runs like a hairy goat. Goes full rich, smooth, back to his normal LOP fuel flow, rough as an outback road after a wet season. He returns to the field and says.....you touched my injectors didn't you!! Sheepishly the LAME says yes, I always do at 100hrly's. Why? Well one of them has a partial blockage and sure enough it does. Problem corrected, LOP pilot blasts off home and all is sweet for another 100 hrs.

The ROP pilot is still blissfully unaware that his turbocharged engine is running with one cylinder in mild to medium detonation for the next 100 hours (provided it does not start a preignition event) because that one cylinder is running around 50 - 75dF ROP most days and the rest full rich at about 250dF.

Neither of these two pilots used engine monitors.....but which one needed one the most?

Simple. The ROP pilot did.

Myth busted.

It is not to say we condone this at APS, we believe all engines and pilots deserve a good EMS and the education to understand what it is telling you.

So this brings me to the next myth. One of Jaba's courses as it seems to be known, is actually the EXACT same course as developed by Walter Atkinson, George Braly and John Deakin. Two of whom frequent here.

This class spends very little time indeed teaching you how to run LOP. We actually spend more minutes on teach you to run ROP properly. How is that for a myth busting!! What we do is teach understanding of the combustion process from a data backed scientific approach. This is a few hours worth. We teach the effects on these scientific parameters by the pilot via the three control inputs, and you learn to not only read but understand the data from the Dyno. We then transition you to the typical engine monitor. After that we teach a lot of understanding of the myriad of faults that can be diagnosed in flight. Some life threatening ones and others that will save you a fortune in workshop expenses.

We also teach you the pilot how to communicate all this well with the LAME. We also teach you the LAME how to understand your customers and their data files. The last course in Sydney had at least 3 LAME's in the room. I had emails afterwards saying word for word..."where were you 20 years ago when I needed you". This is a great resource for both pilots and LAME's.

Last of all we teach a lot of critical thinking, so both pilots and LAME's can actually read between the lines and the BS that is printed randomly through many manuals. And yes we use real POH's and it is amazing the looks we get in class and are typical.

This process takes two and a half days and it is intense, several on pprune have done them in the last year, they will most likely confirm this and why it is impossible to convey it all in a few posts on pprune. If we could we would. And contrary to some opinion, we do not do it for profit. We try to keep it from costing us and possibly we don't. We do it because we enjoy sharing the knowledge and nobody else does.

So Myth 2 BUSTED!

I will let my keyboard cool off for a minute and come back to assist yr right with some understanding of things. One thing I and Mr Atkinson, Braly, Deakin and Denyer promise is that if someone is actually willing to learn and shows signs of being determined to learn, despite the strongly held beliefs we were all once taught, we will do our best to share the education. This is not at all about being in pi##ing contests.

LeadSled

yr right,
About five seconds, less than ten seconds, as short as the standard procedure for the failure could reduce the RPM.
The IO-540 is a solid old girl, just look at the RPM/BMEP used on the TSIO versions. The biggest danger in an overspeed is damage to the harmonic balance weights, if they are OK, the likelihood of engine damage is limited, if there is any suggestion of balance weight problems, it is a bulk strip. (The overspeed was as near a makes no difference, 10%)
You should read what Creampuff has to say, and consider it very carefully. What he (and Jaba) is saying is good common sense.
Having "opinions" that are directly contrary to the well established and unchallenged (by knowledgeable persons) facts is not helpful in Aviation.
Tootle pip!!

PS: The ATSB accident report on the Whyalla loss of the Chieftain was one of ATSB's less credible efforts.

Creampuff

That’s putting it rather mildly, Leaddie! Mr Deakin’s article, still available on the web, was a little more blunt.

Some of my favourite bits:

LeadSled

Creamie,
Too true, I guess a more accurate & technically correct aeronautical description would be "total crap".
But you know me, Mr. Mild personified.
Quite apart from the lack of knowledge of engine operations, the ATSB description of the mechanism of the crankshaft failure was so far removed from engineering reality, as to be beyond a joke.
However, I must say that the misinformation about engine operations did reach the highest levels, with the then Minister, John Anderson, questioning yours truly about "aggressive leaning" as the cause of one failure.
As we have seen in the current Minister's "answer" to the Senate inquiry, such people rely heavily on "the Government appointed air safety experts", it is very difficult to intercept such misinformation.
Tootle pip!!

Creampuff

Now that right there’s funny!

My shout next beers.

(Time to change the thread name again? )

No Hoper

Creampuff, it would appear that the myth that lead is an "upper cyl lubricant" was started by snake oil salesmen when lead was removed from super petrol.
The original patent sites anti knock characteristics only.
Yet in 2014 you can still buy replacement upper cylinder lubricant. It is a difficult one to debunk. BTW I run a early ford 302 without UCL

Creampuff

Hi NH

Among the many lessons I'm grateful to have learned from the APS guys is the real and only reason for lead in AVGAS: Increased latency.

That 302 of yours is doomed to failure ... after a few decades more of no UCL operation!

Safe (no lead) driving and (low lead) flying!

LeadSled

Folks,
To this day, the literature about avgas from at least two of the "Big Oil" lineup quote exhaust seat hammering and TEL as a lubricant ------ don't shoot the messenger !!
Tootle pip!!

No Hoper

Tetraethyl lead was developed by Midgley working for GM, it was one of many compounds tested to prevent the knock.
It was marketed as Ethyl so that lead wasn't mentioned.

As leadsled(Honda GoldWing?) said it morphed into a cure all, preventing valve seat pounding and tuliping of the valve head and lubricating the valves.

As for preignition I would be looking at ignition timing.

topdrop

I am enjoying the thread titles.

yr right

Well lets say about leaning out in it most aggressive state. Now this aggressive to the max but proves beyond doubt what happens . As ive stated before as you lean you slower the burn rate is. If you really lean you have the chance to have the burn on overlap the wrong way, That is now the intake is open and the charge ignites the in the manifold. Don't believe me well I suggest that you take a short trip to your local drag strip and watch blowers being lifted of.
Now lead actually acts a lub on the valve seat. Its a seconder action its primary use is raise its octane rating. Low leaded car engines require harden valve seats to stop wear on the seats and valve. Also something from my memory bank that radial engines are different by memory they also use 130 octane fuel that was around back then cant quite remember the exact figures though im sure someone knows it.
The cost of putting additives in any product cost $$$$$ in these days if they don't need them they don't use them.
Work beckons now go see what your science shows me today pmsl

Dexta

With regard to TEL as a lubricant/Valve seat wonder-all that has basically been debunked, how is it that Petersen who does the MOGAS STC state that every 75 hours a tank of AVGAS must be run through the engine. Is this because of;
a) Petersen believe in the OWT.
b) Some officious entity made them put it in "Just in case"
c) it provides some other function.
If you need a quote re: the 75 hours, I'll dig up my documentation and post it, otherwise it might be on their website.

Dexta.

No Hoper

Dexta, perhaps to lubricate the seals in the fuel system.

Extending the duration of valve overlap as well as cam lift and the speed of the ramp are used to increase VE at high RPM to 100percent and theoretically higher. The effect of this is little vacuum at idle and backfiring and afterfiring one sees in Funnny cars and Top Fuelers

Creampuff

Now I get it.

yr right is actually Jabba in disguise, deliberately spruiking every OWT ever invented to whip up interest in APS.

Good one Jabba!

Let me guess the next one. Hmmmmm, I know: I should idle stationary on the tarmac for 3 minutes after each flight, to ‘cool’ the turbo?

(The engine monitor data demonstrating that the end of the landing roll after a lovely long descent is the coolest that baby’s gonna get during the flight, and it’s all hotter from there on, is of course irrelevant.)

No Hoper

And you all would be keeping those cylinder head temps up during this long glide in?

Creampuff

That's the next one, NH: "Shock Cooling" - it's the one and only cause of cylinder and crankcase cracks.

Aussie Bob

Dexta, I hear what you are saying, I too have a Peterson STC. What I want to know (not) is how the lead lasts the 75 hours between usage.