AOPA PILOT Review

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The Savvy Owner seminars

Woe to the airplane owner who get poor advice regarding maintenance matters. Do a top overhaul or just overhaul the weak cylinder? A misguided decision on this issue will cost an owner thousands of dollars, without increasing safety one iota.

Owners take one of two paths: They turn everything over to the professionals at the local maintenance facility, or they become "owners-in-command," educated and savvy enough to actively take the lead in maintenance decision making.

Until Mike Busch -- founder of a weekend seminar series titled the Savvy Owner Seminar -- began offering his seminars at different locations early this year, the transition time for moving from being an owner in the first group to becoming a member of the second group -- an owner in command of maintenance -- took years.

Busch got his pilot certificate in 1964 and bought his first airplane four years later. After a successful career in software design, Busch in 1995 co founded AVweb, the first online aviation news service. He fulfilled the experience requirement for his airframe and powerplant (A&P) certificate the hard way -- by logging his maintenance experience. He does almost all the maintenance on his turbocharged twin-engine 1979 Cessna T310R.

For the past 10 years he has written the "Tech Topics" column for the CPA (Cessna Pilots Association) Magazine. Busch is not an airport lounge theorist; he does the work and he's got a knack for getting to the core of maintenance problems.

During Savvy Owner seminars, which take a weekend and are held at different sites around the country, Busch covers topics such as getting decent maintenance, dealing with high parts prices, and where to go when your engine needs an overhaul.

Busch also clarifies the issue of how to control and manage maintenance costs -- and goes into depth on maintenance regulations. There's also a section on basic troubleshooting techniques that pilots can use to define the gravity of in-flight problems.

Here's a popular subject of debate -- the minute an airplane is flown past engine TBO (time between overhauls), the insurance will automatically be cancelled. Not true. How about this one -- a mechanic can ground an airplane. Again, not true -- a mechanic can only decline to approve an airplane for return to service. Busch has heard the myths, and he knows the truth.

Some of Busch's suggestions will surprise owners. For instance, Busch puts forth a dollars-and-cents argument against doing top overhauls. According to his Savvy Owner study, it's always smarter from an economic point of view to replace only the cylinder that's sick -- it never makes sense to do a top overhaul.

The primary tenet of the Savvy Owner class is that knowledge is power.

--Steven W. Ells, West Coast Editor

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