Raptor05121
Mooney Apostate
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2010
- Messages
- 1,119
- Reaction score
- 152
Being on nightshift (6p-6a) I am awake most of the night with little to do. Last night was my 'day' off so I decided to go up and do a couple circuits and keep my night currency up.
I drove 45 minutes to the rental (Cherokee 180) and took it out. Extensive pre-flight, setting up seat, radio, calling ATIS, etc took another 30 minutes. After happy that the plane was safe to go up, I fired it up.
Start up was violent, and the plane shook a lot. I get it out to the runway and do a mag check and the left mag dropped 500rpm and the shaking got worse. No doubt a bad plug/ignition issue. I tried burning it off just in case, but didn't work. It was discouraging wasting almost 2 hours to go flying and find out its a no-go but it did not take much to convince me otherwise. I have over 100 hours in this specifc plane and I've never felt it run that way before, so it was a red-flag.
Not looking for diagnosis, I'm sure it will be fixed shortly, just thought I'd share. Its the second time in my flying career I had to return to the pad without flying. Last time was in a 152 with the same issue (turned out to be a broken insulator on the spark plug).
I drove 45 minutes to the rental (Cherokee 180) and took it out. Extensive pre-flight, setting up seat, radio, calling ATIS, etc took another 30 minutes. After happy that the plane was safe to go up, I fired it up.
Start up was violent, and the plane shook a lot. I get it out to the runway and do a mag check and the left mag dropped 500rpm and the shaking got worse. No doubt a bad plug/ignition issue. I tried burning it off just in case, but didn't work. It was discouraging wasting almost 2 hours to go flying and find out its a no-go but it did not take much to convince me otherwise. I have over 100 hours in this specifc plane and I've never felt it run that way before, so it was a red-flag.
Not looking for diagnosis, I'm sure it will be fixed shortly, just thought I'd share. Its the second time in my flying career I had to return to the pad without flying. Last time was in a 152 with the same issue (turned out to be a broken insulator on the spark plug).
