Ed_Wischmeyer
Well Known Member
To finish up the thread, "Declared an Emergency Today"...
Got the p-mags back from the shop, installed, and the plane ran up fine yesterday. Ferried it back home today, and *everything* worked as expected: prop gave the same minor surge on takeoff, speeds were back up, everything.
Quick summary of the original problem: With 8 hours on the 15W50 oil that replaced the 100 weight; and having just fueled the airplane; on a day that was perfect for carburetor ice; had a prop surge, declared an emergency, had a few power burbles on the way back to the airport I'd just taken off from, and I lost more than 20 knots of groundspeed with the MP and tach unchanged. After landing, the runup was fine.
But the next day, on runup, one p-mag was completely dead. Somebody else had had the same experience with a p-mag failure, also leading to an inflight power loss. My problem was a dying p-mag, and if I'd been more knowledgeable / more aware, I could have checked the mags in flight, restored full power (probably), and flown home.
By the way, the p-mags are a cinch to time. They have a manifold pressure sensor, and the way you time the mags is to turn the prop to top dead center (not 25 degrees before) and cinch 'em down tight. Turn on the master switch with the mags off and observe one color LED on the back of the mags; blow once and observe the LED color change to something else; blow again and observe the LEDs change to another color. You've just timed the mags.
Thanks to one and all for the thoughts, comments, and suggestions.
Ed
Got the p-mags back from the shop, installed, and the plane ran up fine yesterday. Ferried it back home today, and *everything* worked as expected: prop gave the same minor surge on takeoff, speeds were back up, everything.
Quick summary of the original problem: With 8 hours on the 15W50 oil that replaced the 100 weight; and having just fueled the airplane; on a day that was perfect for carburetor ice; had a prop surge, declared an emergency, had a few power burbles on the way back to the airport I'd just taken off from, and I lost more than 20 knots of groundspeed with the MP and tach unchanged. After landing, the runup was fine.
But the next day, on runup, one p-mag was completely dead. Somebody else had had the same experience with a p-mag failure, also leading to an inflight power loss. My problem was a dying p-mag, and if I'd been more knowledgeable / more aware, I could have checked the mags in flight, restored full power (probably), and flown home.
By the way, the p-mags are a cinch to time. They have a manifold pressure sensor, and the way you time the mags is to turn the prop to top dead center (not 25 degrees before) and cinch 'em down tight. Turn on the master switch with the mags off and observe one color LED on the back of the mags; blow once and observe the LED color change to something else; blow again and observe the LEDs change to another color. You've just timed the mags.
Thanks to one and all for the thoughts, comments, and suggestions.
Ed