Savvy Aviation Mike Busch Videos - Thoughts?

[Bell206]

These are the types of things that I think Mike contributes.

I dont think anybody doubts his contribution for putting maintenence info out for public consumption. That was his initial intent with his 1st web site in the 90s. Where most people tend to roll their eyes is when he implies a majority of that info is/was his idea which most is not. But the real question is would you pick MB to be your A&P/IA on your aircraft based on his experience alone?

 

[Barrett50]

I dont think anybody doubts his contribution for putting maintenence info out for public consumption. That was his initial intent with his 1st web site in the 90s. Where most people tend to roll their eyes is when he implies a majority of that info is/was his idea which most is not. But the real question is would you pick MB to be your A&P/IA on your aircraft based on his experience alone?

His work on LOP operations may not be legendary, but it flew in the face of Conti operations that were the bible for 50 years. His work on failure analysis is significantly different than the generic 'pull the jug and replace it' mentality pervasive in the shade tree A&P. There might be other ways in which his contribution has been a bit fresher than the field expedient methods.

I think he brought a whiff of Edward Deming methodology to engine service and maint. Into a system that was sorely lacking in diagnostics, and evaluation. The old days of 'throwing parts at it' prevailed in light single/twin service for decades. I know I went through it several times with an older A&P who thought he had all the answers, and those answers invariably meant to replace some part, and see if that helped or not.

Yes, I would hire him as an A&P. I don't know if he has an IA? If so, yes would trust him with an annual insp signoff.

 

[Racerx]

I view him as a guy with theoretical knowledge rather than practical experience. I'll take the guy with practical experience every time. But I'll listen to both.

 

[Gilbert Buettner]

two.

Three. But I do know Mike personally. Not well, but we have met a couple of times. I enjoy his articles but have not looked at videos.

 

[Bell206]

The old days of 'throwing parts at it' prevailed in light single/twin service for decades.

You have that reversed. In the "old days" we would troubleshoot the problem and fixed things. And some of us still do. You’ll find the parts cannon approach is something fairly new and at times is owner induced as they won’t pay for troubleshooting time if a new part is cheaper or the same cost.

As to failure analysis that has actually been around for decades. He merely took those processes and wrote articles about it. The main reason you don’t see more of it at the recreational level is because it costs money. There are a number of threads on PoA that get into failures and how to prevent them. Yet those same problems continue to pop up on a regular basis.

Yes, I would hire him as an A&P. I don't know if he has an IA? If so, yes would trust him with an annual insp signoff.

Interesting. So what are your personal top 3 requirements for a mechanic to work on your aircraft? And what model aircraft do you own?

 

[Barrett50]

You have that reversed. In the "old days" we would troubleshoot the problem and fixed things. And some of us still do. You’ll find the parts cannon approach is something fairly new and at times is owner induced as they won’t pay for troubleshooting time if a new part is cheaper or the same cost.

As to failure analysis that has actually been around for decades. He merely took those processes and wrote articles about it. The main reason you don’t see more of it at the recreational level is because it costs money. There are a number of threads on PoA that get into failures and how to prevent them. Yet those same problems continue to pop up on a regular basis.


Interesting. So what are your personal top 3 requirements for a mechanic to work on your aircraft? And what model aircraft do you own?

No, I don't. I've been on the planet a while, and in GA for many decades. I've seen it at more FBO maint facilities than I can recall. The idea of 'huh - I don't know, but lets replace the XXX and test it again'. Very common with the cylinder pull discussion vis-a-vis Mike's different process philosophy.

I don't think I have a 'top 3 requirements'. In fact, for most of my ownership of different planes, I did about 80% of the work on my plane, and have the A&P look at my work and sign it off, or advise to do it a certain way according to the current manuals. In my capacity as owner I've done the following: R&R engine, prop, fuel pump, Fuel tank bladder, windscreen(single pane), alt, fabric repair, shoulder harness inst, jug(rebuilt installed), flight control rigging, R&R aileron(s), throttle/mixture cables, paint, gear trunnions, flap motor, hyd pump, fuel lines, and selector valves. This besides common jobs like tires, brakes, and interior panels. I currently own several SEL planes of different models.

 

[Bell206]

No, I don't. I've been on the planet a while, and in GA for many decades. I've seen it at more FBO maint facilities than I can recall. The idea of 'huh - I don't know, but lets replace the XXX and test it again'. Very common with the cylinder pull discussion vis-a-vis Mike's different process philosophy.

Well, I’ve had a very different experience after actually working on airplanes and helicopters for over 40 years at various levels. And I think most other longtime mechanics will have had the same experience as well.

But for discussion, if this has been going on for “decades,” what MB philosophy was lacking in how those FBO mx guys did their work say 20 or 30 years ago?

I don't think I have a 'top 3 requirements'.

That’s even more interesting. So you’ll hire a mechanic or IA with limited hands-on maintenance experience, maintenance knowledge limited to only one model aircraft, and only turns wrenches as a part-time hobby?

I currently own several SEL planes of different models.

So why not list the models?

 

[AvNavCom]

I'll chime in as a lowly Pa-28-180 owner. I own MB's owner and engine books, and I enjoy listening to Ask the A&Ps. While I'm sure professional mechanics are familiar with everything he discusses, as a non-mechanic pilot who really wants to work on my own plane as much as possible for systems knowledge (and because it's fun), I find that his approach has been helpful in digesting the fundamentals of aircraft engines and airframes. I appreciate his emphasis on the importance of a data-driven approach as much as possible, and resisting the urge to yank cylinders or other components on hunches rather than a reasoned approach.

Most of all, I like his Owner-in-command philosophy. Corny name aside, I appreciate the reminder that I should be the final decision maker on my aircraft, with my mechanic providing expert advice and letting me know the left-right boundaries of what they're willing to do under their own license. Just as my own field (medicine) has changed from a top-down system to a collaborative system, I support the idea of a collaborative approach to aircraft maintenance rather than a "my way or the highway" approach. Just as mechanics (and everyone) should expect their physician to listen to them, answer questions, and accept the desire for a "second opinion", so should pilots be able to expect their mechanics to listen, answer questions, and accept that their clients may be getting a "second opinion" from a disinterested mechanic at Savvy.

I had a wonderful mechanic in California who was careful, detail-oriented, and cared about high quality work. He also looked me dead in the eye and told me that my wildly excessive fuel flow on my EIS was due to the engine break-in and that my new CiES fuel-senders would show "full" until my tanks were down to tabs due to their placement. Neither made sense to me and I argued that he was wrong, which he didn't like. It turned out that the EIS had an improper K-factor and the CiES senders just needed proper calibration (both fuel-flow and senders are now accurate within 0.5 gallons. Had I not challenged his assertions instead of accepting them, I'd still be flying with jacked up instrumentation.

I have a huge amount of respect for A&Ps and I'm fully aware that I'm quite literally trusting my life to the quality of their work. They're also human and make mistakes. My personal ask for an A&P is to listen to my concerns or requests, come up with a "differential diagnosis" to fix any issues based on best-evidence, and to be able to articulate to me the WHY of what we're doing. Other than that, never, ever BS me. I'd much rather hear "I don't know but I'll find out" than a guess presented as an assertion.

 

[Barrett50]

Well, I’ve had a very different experience after actually working on airplanes and helicopters for over 40 years at various levels. And I think most other longtime mechanics will have had the same experience as well.

But for discussion, if this has been going on for “decades,” what MB philosophy was lacking in how those FBO mx guys did their work say 20 or 30 years ago?


That’s even more interesting. So you’ll hire a mechanic or IA with limited hands-on maintenance experience, maintenance knowledge limited to only one model aircraft, and only turns wrenches as a part-time hobby?


So why not list the models?

"So you'll..." is a change in the statement I made which is not congruent to my original statement of not having a top 3 req. You have made an exaggeration of your own point, and then claiming it represents my point of view. I will evaluate the guy/girl working on my plane that may not be in the same process flow as you would. Probably because we have different backgrounds, and different philosophies on how service should be done, as represented in your challenging me about how I should select the mech.

I've been pretty successful in choosing the right person to fix stuff, but even more successful in finding the right person to watch me fix stuff and then check box what I've done.

As for getting info on what I own and fly, I'm sorry but we don't know each other well enough, and I don't have any interest in publicly identifying my equipment. If that's a problem, you going to have to learn to live with some disappointment in life. I guess, you can now say I'm hiding behind my lack of knowledge and experience. meh

 

[po1212]

Mike Busch has been very helpful to me over the years. He knows a lot about twin Cessna's

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Yeah, I don't understand the hate, but he does have a few haters. I think most of them (as is so often the case) dislike what they think he's saying, having not actually listened to what he's saying.

Mike is a person who knows a lot of things and is very logical about his thinking, but can rub people the wrong way because of how he says things, even if he's right. After interacting with him and being surprised at how much of a jerk he came across as, I asked someone I knew who was well-connected in the industry. He said "Mike Busch is a character - And by character I mean *******."

I don't know that I have enough experience with him to agree, but it certainly left a less than favorable impression. I'll definitely listen to what he has to say regarding maintenance, but I sure wouldn't go out of my way to hang out with him.

Yes. This goes along with monitoring things like metal in the filter/screen, oil consumption, and borescoping the cylinders. A regularly flown & maintained engine should be able to make double TBO unless it's one of the more highly stressed/turbo models. It seldom happens because most engines spend a lot of time sitting, or get overhauled when lapping a valve or doing a ring flush would've saved it. My engine, in spite of being overhauled almost 20 years and 1200 hours ago, measured to factory new specifications. Almost a shame to overhaul it, but from an economic/resale standpoint it didn't make sense to me to tear it down and not do the little bit extra to call it a major overhaul.

If you haven't heard his webinar about the flying club that took an O-320 (or maybe it was a 360) to 5000 hours, it's a good one.

That was a local group that I have some friends in. The plane flies a lot... And that's the key. A plane that flies at least once a week EVERY week, and usually more, can have an engine go for a LONG time. My former flying club ran an IO-360 to 3600 hours and it was still going strong, they just did the overhaul because of the high number of hours and the desire to not have to overhaul it during prime flying season. We also sold a plane with an O-360 that was well north of 3000 hours and still going strong, and had an O-470 go close to 1000 hours past TBO.

Got it - good news. I wonder if I can get our club to do that. Planes fly constantly, low chance for corrosion. They overhaul all planes at TBO. This also changes what I’ll do on my plane.

Yikes. I know of other clubs that do that, or just flat-out sell the planes as they get near TBO. It's a HUGE waste of money, especially in a club environment where the planes are flown more often than private owners would generally fly.

PS - On the subject of changing the dominant maintenance narrative, John Deakin deserves a shout-out. His Pelican Perch column and specifically “Those Fire Breathing Turbos” are so good I have returned to them many times. Are they still up somewhere, I hope?

"Pelican's Perch" Index

A complete index to John Deakin's popular Pelican's Perch column on AVweb.

www.avweb.com

Deakin's stuff is gold. "Manifold Pressure Sucks" is the best explanation I've ever seen about what manifold pressure is and how it relates to constant speed prop operation, and that is where I send anyone who's about to learn how to operate a CS prop for the first time. I really wish there were still regular columns on AvWeb - I also really enjoyed Rick Durden's "Pilot's Lounge" and Don Brown's "Say Again?" as well.

Although I have a borescope and use it fairly regularly, I choose not to upload my pictures to their database; I feel like he’s getting a “free” library of pix and I’m not sure I see how that benefits me but I may be missing the obvious.

That sort of thing, in addition to the data that they're getting for Savvy Analysis, helps Savvy learn things and thus benefits their subscribers... They should probably give you a free month once you've contributed a certain amount to their knowledge base!

It sounds like that to a pretty good extent, Savvy is mainly for owners who are either not well-informed and knowledgeable about maintenance in general and their own airplanes, and/or for people who won’t question an A&P and will just write the check, no matter how much.

Yes, with an asterisk.

I was getting annoyed with the amount of work *I* was putting into an issue I was paying my shop to fix. Looking into part suppliers, learning about failure modes, and trying to figure out why things were occurring the way they were, because my plane was going into the shop repeatedly for the same issue and *I* was the one looking into the maintenance manual instructions, calling the part manufacturer and telling the mechanics what adjustment to make next.

I was thinking "Man, a really good shop would have someone whose job it is to do this for everyone" and I realized that that is exactly the service that Savvy provides - Or at least, I think that's one of the things they do since I am not a subscriber myself. But I can definitely see why people subscribe, and why shops might not be too happy to work with them.

 

[Tarheelpilot]

One has to take Mike Busch with a grain of salt. He claims more knowledge that he actually possesses. He is an IT guy who gets into aircraft maintenance biz later in his life. He tends to extrapolate his limited experience, focused on Cessna's and Continental engines, to everything else. For years he tried to claim that running any aircraft engine at CHT's above about 380F or so, would kill them. Not true for Lycomings. He finally backed off that after a decade of being wrong. I have seen a number of pre-buy reviews of Comanches done by Busch and his people and they are expensive garbage, but for Cessna's and Cirrus's, he might be great.

Philosophically, I agree with much of what he says, but often his criticism of mechanics misses the mark as he has never had to run a shop -- or even work in one -- and have to balance the needs of safety, legality, the owner, and the financial realities of running a business. One can't run a maintenance shop on the my-way-or-the-runway method and still keep the doors open.

I think you are 100% correct. When I was working in a shop we had several customers that used his maintenance management services. I know it’s anecdotal but the majority of times his staff intervened in the process it resulted in higher costs for the customer. There were a couple times it went the other way. Personally I wouldn’t waste the money on the guy but not everyone has an A&P so I see how he makes money. It eventually got bad enough our shop lead put some hard boundaries in place with customers that were savvy managed.

 

[AvNavCom]

I was thinking "Man, a really good shop would have someone whose job it is to do this for everyone" and I realized that that is exactly the service that Savvy provides - Or at least, I think that's one of the things they do since I am not a subscriber myself. But I can definitely see why people subscribe, and why shops might not be too happy to work with them.

It's basically like having a mechanic shop on retainer. I can send in whatever question I want and get an answer usually fairly quickly. Questions I've asked range from simple stuff regarding preventative maintenance tasks I'm not entirely familiar with (answered by a regular A&P), to more complex stuff about avionics installations (answered by an avionics-specialist). It's helpful since I don't want to bother my own A&P with questions I'm not paying him for, and I can get another perspective on issues.

It's also important to understand that SavvyQA is just for folks who want an A&P In their "back pocket" to give advice and knowledge. SavvyMX is where they actively manage maintenance and call shops. I do think there's some value in having a service that allows owners to get information and advice from a mechanic who doesn't have any financial interest in the aircraft's maintenance. As I said in my post above, if my patient wants a "second opinion" to help with decision making, it's bad form for me to get upset about that. And I certainly wouldn't allow them to come in and try to tell me what I was going to do based on that other doctor's opinion. But I'm happy to have a more informed discussion and make that collaborative decision. Maintenance should be the same way.

 

[po1212]

Following Mike's advise I just went to 2500 hours on my 1400 hour TBO engines with no issues with the bottom end.

 

[Bell206]

"So you'll..." is a change in the statement I made which is not congruent to my original statement of not having a top 3 req.

Not really. You stated you’d hire MB to work your aircraft and sign your annual. I thought that was interesting and inquired further. Based on your reply, I concluded, “So you’ll… hire a mechanic or IA with limited hands-on maintenance experience, maintenance knowledge limited to only one model aircraft and only turns wrenches as a part-time hobby.” That’s about as congruent as it gets.

 

[40YearDream]

Now, for those of us who want to learn from MB - will somebody please come out with the 'Readers Digest Condensed Version' ? His videos and podcasts could be greatly shortened.

 

[AvNavCom]

Now, for those of us who want to learn from MB - will somebody please come out with the 'Readers Digest Condensed Version' ? His videos and podcasts could be greatly shortened.

His books are available as audiobooks, mostly narrated by someone else, I believe. You can probably listen a 2x speed and get it as condensed as you like!