By Lisa Turner, EAA Lifetime 509911
This piece originally ran in Lisa’s Airworthy column in the March 2020 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.
“I’ll show you how to preflight first.”
Ellen handed me a clear plastic tube and a small flashlight and started walking around the Cessna 152. As she pointed items out to me, I tried to absorb it all.
“Don’t I need to write this down?”
“No, not yet. Watch first.”
I didn’t have a clue. As Ellen went on, showing me parts of the aircraft and pointing out things I should pay particular attention to, I was feeling totally non-absorptive.
“I should be writing this down,” I muttered to myself.
“We’ll get to that,” Ellen said after overhearing me.
After 15 minutes, I was completely confused.
“And now, for the next time, here’s the walk-around checklist,” she said.
Ellen handed me the laminated cards out of the side pocket of the airplane.
“Good! Finally!” I said. But I still felt dumber than a rock.
The next time I arrived for a lesson, Ellen handed me the fuel tester and flashlight again and said, “You preflight.”
It’s amazing that I went through this process without missing something important. It’s a tribute to the basic durability and safety of the aircraft that there wasn’t a problem, especially considering my abject lack of knowledge and understanding of the systems that needed to be inspected.
Over the course of my flight lessons, I got better at preflighting and realized how much I didn’t know. It took a lot of time and a lot of experience to reach the point where I thought I knew what I was doing.
**
But then, there’s outright ignorance.
**
“It looks pretty rough.”
“Well, maybe it could use a cover job,” Stanley said as he watched his friend Brian poke the flimsy fabric on the rudder.
“I’ll say it does.”
“Okay, look, let’s buy it,” Stanley said. “It’s a great price. We’ll cover it piecemeal while we’re flying.”
“I guess we could do that. But it will have to be piecemeal. Things are really tight right now.”
The year was 1965. The two men tied down the 1952 Piper Tri-Pacer at the small airport in upstate New York, not being able to afford the $34 a month hangar rent. Each weekend one of them would take friends flying.
One summer night, Brian brought two of his friends out to the airport, and everyone loaded into the airplane. Brian started the engine and taxied to the runway. There wasn’t a soul around at the late, dark hour. The airplane took off.
“Uh-oh, there’s a problem,” Brian said. “I’m having trouble with the controls.”
The Tri-Pacer entered an uncontrolled turn and went down a mile beyond the runway. After the crash, Brian and his two friends were able to get out of the wreckage with scrapes and bruises.
The moon emerged from behind a cloud, lighting up the scene as the three men looked at the airplane in shock. The rudder was missing!
“I don’t get it,” Brian said, shaking his head. “What happened to the rudder?”
An old truck pulled up to the strange scene in the field.
“Thank God everyone is okay,” Stanley said as he jumped out of the cab. “I didn’t have time to tell you that I removed the rudder today for covering — and then I heard you take off. I thought you would have seen that the airplane was without the rudder!”
“I didn’t even look,” Brian said, squeezing his eyes shut and lowering his head.
True story.
**
“Inspection is the critical visual examining, testing, measuring, and functional checking required to determine the airworthiness of the items being inspected.” — Aircraft Inspection for the General Aviation Aircraft Owner, FAA Advisory Circular AC20-106
Are we natural inspectors and troubleshooters? Generally, no. Most of us have to learn what to look for and use flow diagrams and checklists. Even when we think we have all the tools at hand, it may not be enough.
When I began inspecting power supplies as a technician, the supplies looked like a mass of wire and circuit boards. I didn’t know where to start. Having the schematic didn’t make any difference. I sat down to inspect my first power supply on the first day with two oscilloscopes and two electrical test meters in front of me. I had a dumb-as-a-rock moment.
I was lucky to have a good supervisor who sat down next to me to explain the process. He told me to take detailed notes as he methodically started through the inspection checklist. I realized then that “inspection and test” was no simple matter.
When I experienced a technical counselor visit to my first aircraft build, I was amazed at the TC’s ability to pick out small details.
“I just didn’t see that,’ I said as he pointed out missing cotter keys, missing safety wire, and missing labels.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll get better. People are not born inspectors.”
Whether you are building your own aircraft, maintaining an aircraft, or simply doing preflights on your own or someone else’s airplane, here are some tips to improve your troubleshooting and make you more effective as an inspector.
Knowledge
There is no substitute for knowing what you’re looking at and knowing what to look for. Flight instructors will tell you that students think they know the airplane after a few preflights. But when they create tests and surprises, the students miss the items over half the time. It takes experience to get good at something, just like flying does.
Study the aircraft manual forward and backward. Ask someone to test you. If you have an experimental aircraft without a manual, write one. There’s no better way to become acquainted with everything.
Next, become acquainted with the systems and how they work. You can find information at your flight school, online, on the EAA website (especially the videos), and through the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Sporty’s, King Schools, and Rod Machado. When you know what something is supposed to do, you’ll be in a position to recognize a problem and troubleshoot it. Seek out troubleshooting flow charts or make your own.
Hands-On
All the knowledge in the world won’t help you unless you know what you’re looking at. When I started my power supply inspections, I knew all about transistors, diodes, and capacitors, but when I looked at the assembled power supply, I was at a loss. Only after connecting the physical parts with the process could I understand what was actually going on.
The best way to get this familiarity is with someone else who can point out what you should be seeing. A few days following A&P mechanics around is a great way to do this. Ask them to quiz you on components and functions — they’ll love it.
Ask your technical counselor to do the same thing — show and tell, and then quiz you.
Technology
Checklists have now become high-tech in the form of apps that you can download to your tablet and smartphone. Make sure you have the most current checklist for your aircraft and take note of any advice the manufacturer gives you. Some of these tools even have audio that you can respond to.
There’s nothing wrong with paper checklists if you are not into the apps. Even if you’ve used the same list hundreds of times, imagine that this is the first time you’ve looked at it.
Psychology
In the mix of these tools and skills, mindset is the most important. How you approach an inspection, a preflight, or a flying decision will lay the foundation for managing risk and, ultimately, your safety level.
Habits can be a two-edged sword. If you’ve inspected something 200 times and everything was fine all 200 times, you’ll expect it to be fine on the 201st look. What you need to do is start fresh every time, clear your mind, and expect to find a problem. No, this won’t create a problem, as some think; it will simply make you look past an expected finding and be open to it being something different.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting ties together all the above skills into a web of systematic logic. If we apply knowledge along with our hands-on training, use the technology available, and understand how to remain rational, we will arrive at a fast solution. At this stage, we need to be careful, because our inclination will be to jump to what we think the problem is. Stay focused and patient.
Following this process will make us really good inspectors and troubleshooters. It’s not an easy process, but I’d encourage you to be patient and keep studying and working at it. These skills are at the core of competence for a technical counselor, but you can do this, too.
The techniques work for anything and everything you want to master, not just aircraft.
I may have made this sound more complex than it needs to be, but the method is important. Approach your inspections with knowledge and experience, test yourself, ask for help. Approach troubleshooting with a rational, logical progression. No jumping! Clear your mind of preconceptions. If you do end up missing something (there’s that human thing again), you will also know that you did everything within your power to find it.
Lisa Turner, EAA Lifetime 509911, is a manufacturing engineer, A&P, technical counselor, flight advisor, and former DAR who writes the Airworthy column each month in EAA Sport Aviation Magazine. She built and flew a Pulsar XP and Kolb Mark III, and is researching her next homebuilt project. Lisa’s third book, Dream Take Flight, details her Pulsar flying adventures and life lessons. Write Lisa at Lisa@DreamTakeFlight.com and learn more at https://DreamTakeFlight.com.