Aero-Tips!

A good pilot is always learning -- how many times have you heard this old standard throughout your flying career? There is no truer statement in all of flying (well, with the possible exception of "there are no old, bold pilots.")

Aero-News has called upon the expertise of Thomas P. Turner, master CFI and all-around-good-guy, to bring our readers -- and us -- daily tips to improve our skills as aviators. Some of them, you may have heard before... but for each of us, there will also be something we might never have considered before, or something that didn't "stick" the way it should have the first time we memorized it for the practical test.

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Aero-Tips 11.04.06

Much of my working day is spent answering aviation-related questions. Very frequently the topic is engine management -- especially since the members of the organization that pays my bills operate six-cylinder, high-horsepower piston engines. My experience begs two questions:

• How much to pilots need to know about engine management?
• How much do pilots want to know about engine management?

Need to know

Tachometer. Manifold pressure. Fuel flow. Exhaust gas temperature. Cylinder head temperature. Turbine inlet temperature. Oil temperature. Oil pressure. Operating any piston aircraft engine involves no less than three of these variables (tachometer, oil temperature and oil pressure). Many involve more, and the best-equipped, most powerful engines use them all. A typically-equipped light twin is extraordinarily monitor-intensive. The 58TC Baron I flew for a few years had two of everything and (with all-cylinder display) a total of 30 engine temperature indications to watch simultaneously. I didn't have to obsess with engine management to the point it distracted me from flying the airplane, but the potential was definitely there. I could not have safely flown the airplane and protect the engines from possible long-term problems without knowing the relationships between each of the power variables, closely watching indications to avoid temperature excursions, and manually manipulating throttles, propeller speed, mixture, cowl flaps and indicated airspeed to keep temperatures under control. I felt the title of Kas Thomas' early 1990s engine management classic Fly the Engine was an accurate description of piloting the Baron.

Want to know

Many pilots I know (most of whom have been flying complex airplanes for years, if not decades) want to have manual control over all these variables. They scoff at engine automation and actively oppose anything like single power-lever control or electronic ignition systems if it reduces their ability to manipulate each variable. 

I'm becoming convinced however, that most pilots don't want to have to worry about the minutia of engine management. They want to push a button to start it up, and move a single lever fore and aft to control power. They want engine temperature management to occur automatically; they want the system to tell them when conditions deviate from norms. They don't want the aeronautical equivalent of an old car's manual clutch transmission and manual choke. 

Aero-tip of the day: Think about what you need and want to know about engine management. Seek out what you need to know, and use the Discuss This Topic link below to let us know if you would prefer (a) manual control of all engine variables or (b) an engine that accepts simply pilot input and adjusts automatically.

FMI: Aero-Tips