Dear all!
A great big hello to everyone! A quick introduction..
I pilot a Avidyne equipped Piper Meridian PA46-500 and I have flown almost 100 hours in my specific aircraft. It is a lovely aircraft and I'm still learning abit more about her every time I fly her. I also hope to share the passion of flying her with you guys here on this forum, which I didn't know existed until I perhaps did something pretty stupid earlier today. I would like to seek some opinions and thoughts as I'm bashing myself up inside..
Earlier today I had a pretty uneventful flight back to my home base and arrived in the evening at around 20:00 LT. Due to needing to drop off a passenger at the terminal, I taxied to the terminal and shut my plane down in a hurry so I could let her off...
I'm quite sure I followed the check list until I used the condition lever to cut fuel and engine shut down. 15% NG and battery off.
Now herein lies the problem..
I assumed the battery was sufficiently charged as I had just landed from a long 3 hour flight..
I assumed ITT has cooled down sufficiently and this is dumb as it was merely 3 minutes.
So I attempted to start the aircraft. I am quite sure I had turned ignition and fuel pumps to manual. I hope I did.
Starter on manual, finger on the starter button.
NG up to 14% and introduce fuel via condition lever.
I notice the ITT skyrocket and saw white smoke come out of the engine!
I immediately cut fuel and released the starter. The smoke stopped at this point.
I checked the exceedance page and noticed there was a new exceedance logged being ITT at 1002deg for 00.00.00 seconds. Means fuel was cut pretty quickly I hope.
I realized I must've done something wrong, amongst others.
Noticed the cabin comfort control was still turned on. Turned it off.
Now I went thru the checklist properly to make sure everything is done. Noticed only the cabin comfort was turned on when it should be off.
Saw battery at 23.9v, almost bare minimum.
Attempted to start again. Starter on manual.
Engage starter and smoke starts coming out abit. 14.5% NG introduce fuel and abit more white smoke comes out.
Engine spools up and ITT climbs up to yellow zone BUT within limits this time and stabilizes and comes back down.
60% NG disengage starter and fuel pump and ignition to automatic.
This start was successful.
Only indication anything went wrong was the exceedance logged in the exceedance pages with ITT at 1002deg for 00.00.00.
The white smoke was very very worrying for me though. Wonder if I did something to damage my engine....
I taxied the aircraft for around 2-3 km to the hangar. Around 10 minutes of taxi time. I increased power and decreased a few times, within limits of taxiing just to see if anything gives with the engine and all was good.
I have an engine guy from the service center going to check out the engine tomorrow to be safe. Engine is at 652 hours.
Did I hot start my engine? Did I cause damage to the engine?
What did I do wrong?
Attempting to restart so soon after shutdown when ITT is still hot?
Attempting to start without forgetting to turn off other battery sucking items like cabin comfort control leading to insufficient battery power for start?
Did I forget to engage ignition and fuel pump?
I hope she's okay and I think more than ever now, check list prudence is so so so important no matter how confident I am.
The engine will be checked tomorrow but I read a lot of well thought out opinions from you folks on this forum. Would appreciate your thoughts on what went wrong with the start?
Why was the engine blowing out smoke? Could it be unburnt fuel from the first bad start?
Thanks so much for all the thoughts... much much appreciated.