Ted
The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2007
- Messages
- 30,006
- Display Name
Display name:
iFlyNothing
Thursday, my wife and I flew the 310 down to the Houston area for one of our normal dog runs - a load from KCXO (Lone Star Executive Airport) up to New Hampshire.
Friday morning, we loaded up the plane, took off as normal. About the time the gear came up, the left engine started sounding funny. Oil pressure, etc. looked good, but the engine just didn't seem right (with a plane load of barking dogs). Got a bit of altitude, diagnosed the problem. Hmm... EGTs look high, #6 CHT looks high. In-flight mag check showed conclusively that the left mag on the left engine was dead. That's not going to work, time to get back and land.
We needed a new mag. The FBO we usually go to doesn't service piston aircraft, but the jet mechanic there called Greg at General Aviation Services across the field, who came over promptly. We determined the plastic distributor gear in the mag failed, hence the lack of spark. With the help of Spike (who found the location of a local shop that rebuilds these mags), Greg got the mag off in Nascar pit-stop time, we got the mag rebuilt, and back on.
Only to find that Continental apparently designs these gears to fail very reliably, because upon doing the runup, the right mag on the right engine (that was doing just fine) failed in the exact same manner. We got Aviall to overnight the one replacement they had in the country. One of the tower controllers was willing to fly up to Dallas if necessary to get the magneto for us in his Twin Comanche.
This put us at Saturday morning needing to get the plane back together. Greg came in on his day off to get the plane back together and up and running so we could get the pups up to New Hampshire. We'd called the place that had rebuilt the first mag, and they said the best they could do was first thing in the morning on Monday... if we got it to them on Friday.
I'm hoping that we don't have a need to get the plane worked on there again (emergency repairs are never fun), but definitely want to give a big thanks to everyone at KCXO, and especially Greg at General Aviation Services, for helping get us back up and going.
Friday morning, we loaded up the plane, took off as normal. About the time the gear came up, the left engine started sounding funny. Oil pressure, etc. looked good, but the engine just didn't seem right (with a plane load of barking dogs). Got a bit of altitude, diagnosed the problem. Hmm... EGTs look high, #6 CHT looks high. In-flight mag check showed conclusively that the left mag on the left engine was dead. That's not going to work, time to get back and land.
We needed a new mag. The FBO we usually go to doesn't service piston aircraft, but the jet mechanic there called Greg at General Aviation Services across the field, who came over promptly. We determined the plastic distributor gear in the mag failed, hence the lack of spark. With the help of Spike (who found the location of a local shop that rebuilds these mags), Greg got the mag off in Nascar pit-stop time, we got the mag rebuilt, and back on.
Only to find that Continental apparently designs these gears to fail very reliably, because upon doing the runup, the right mag on the right engine (that was doing just fine) failed in the exact same manner. We got Aviall to overnight the one replacement they had in the country. One of the tower controllers was willing to fly up to Dallas if necessary to get the magneto for us in his Twin Comanche.
This put us at Saturday morning needing to get the plane back together. Greg came in on his day off to get the plane back together and up and running so we could get the pups up to New Hampshire. We'd called the place that had rebuilt the first mag, and they said the best they could do was first thing in the morning on Monday... if we got it to them on Friday.
I'm hoping that we don't have a need to get the plane worked on there again (emergency repairs are never fun), but definitely want to give a big thanks to everyone at KCXO, and especially Greg at General Aviation Services, for helping get us back up and going.
