I think, if I may, that part of the problem is the renting of aircraft. Or flying individual aircraft that you rarely fly. You don't get to know them well enough to pick up any oddities. This is another reason why I think ownership or a small partnership is probably safer.
Sure, sometimes things come out of the blue like my two blown cylinders enroute. They happen instantly and with no warning. It subsided after much knob tweaking and elimination. Had I known then that two cylinders were not at all functioning, I would not have continued to my destination like I did. I would have landed at a closer airport with facilities. I'm just glad I didn't have to go around at the destination...
But the benefit of flying a machine that you know pretty well, is that you pick up faults almost subliminally. I was going in to Santa Paula - a very short airfield - and during the whole approach something felt a bit wrong with the left engine. I could hear a very faint pop pop once in awhile. I landed, taxied back, did runups, but found nothing amiss. But when I took off there they were again those random pops. Obviously something at full power was not happy. It was a bit concerning, as this was a short field takeoff at high temps. Had one quit there, it would have been a handful. I flew back uneventfully, but dropped her off my mechanic and sure enough the left mag was grounding and needed stuff replacing. This is different from how she behaves on the first flight of the day: left engine will run rough on one mag on the runup. No leaning will cure it. It's just how she is and it goes away after we've flown for 5 minutes at high power settings.
I must also admit that sometimes one can bee almost too anxiously receptive. Just last week flew to Santa Barbara with a friend and last part of the way there I had a feeling the right engine wasn't happy. It felt like the plane micro-yawed to the right, as if it was having fuel troubles or something. Nothing supported it - oil, temp, EGT, manifold, RPM - all was good as gold. Landed and we had a bite to eat and by the time we started back, it was night. I dreaded that late turn out over the ocean departing Rwy 25, should anything happen. But she climbed on up and soon we were back around over terra firma. Ran like butter all the way home. Must have been some sudden microbursts or wake turbulence that tricked me into thinking it was an engine problem.
Last edited by AdamFrisch; 29th Jul 2012 at 21:44.