Sooner or later your used aircraft search will find an airplane thats suffered a so-called hard landing. While thats the sugarcoated word for damage history, in some circumstances this is hardly a deal breaker. Other times, its best to walk away, especially if the damage has gone unnoticed or left unrepaired.

The chore of rigging the flight controls-which includes, among other things, adjusting control cable tensions-is a maintenance item thats often neglected by owners and mechanics alike. After all, what could possibly change if the airplane has not changed? But change it does. Parts wear out and clearances change, cables stretch, brackets warp and maintenance of seemingly unrelated systems can lead to unforeseen rigging mayhem. At a minimum, improper rigging means lost airspeed. At worst, it can mean a lost airplane. In this article, we’ll look at the symptoms and describe a do-it-yourself process for checking the rigging on your own. The legwork could save you some shop labor.

For many years battery chargers were simple beasts; a heavy transformer to drop the line voltage and a rectifier to change AC to DC made up the bulk of components. Some added a relay to turn on the charger when the voltage fell. Also, some chargers served as battery boosters with a temporary hit of 50 amps or so to nudge a discharged battery into a start. These chargers did a lousy job in terms of battery life and fully charging the battery to its potential (pun intended). Both the RV and boating industries were probably the big drivers in the development of sophisticated, computer-chip-controlled, multi-stage chargers, especially for deep cycle batteries.

We have tested Concorde and Gill aircraft batteries on multiple occasions looking for the longest battery life and best value. In our view, and in our opinions expressed in our reader polls, Concordes products are a better bet. Our gold standard has been the FAA capacity test as the core of that test methodology since it takes each batterys amp-hour rating into consideration during the test, so we are testing apples-to-apples, so to speak. Per FAR 23.1353(h), we look for 80-percent capacity at the one-hour discharge rate. This simulates the stress of an alternator-out situation where battery power alone keeps the essential electronics bus running for a minimum of 30 minutes. There is no established standard for the number of cycles a battery must undergo, and we were only checking to see if the battery passed or failed each test.

There is no shortage of aircraft engine overhaul purveyors out there appealing to a number of aircraft owners who are interested in engines with something special-something that says, “My engine is better than the run-of-the-mill overhaul.” Extras may mean outside flash, special parts, alleged attention to detail or tighter measurement tolerances. Plain, factory engines regularly make TBO, and problems en route to TBO are not often those that a custom engine build would address. Those are long times between overhauls and low utilization that cause corrosion, a cracked cylinder from a metal defect, or improper leaning technique leading to burned valves. Custom overhauls come with claims for more horsepower, greater reliability, smoothness or all three. In our view, the validity of these claims depends on the integrity of the shop, the size of your pocketbook and the seat-of-your-pants feel.

What kind of spark plug do you have in your aircraft engine? Do you even know or care? Or should you just leave that up to the shop and buy whats cheapest? While delegating this choice to your shop is the no-hassle option, we think having an informed opinion on spark plugs might save you a few bucks. Maybe a lot of bucks, actually. But its a case of spending more to save more. In aviation as in everything else, youre confronted with the dilemma of one product that does the same thing as another, but costs twice or three times as much. Thats definitely the case with spark plugs. The popular massive electrode plug sells for a third less than its fine-wire electrode cousin. In this article, we’ll make the pitch for spending the additional money, at least for owners who fly high-performance aircraft and who are interested in fuel economy and long-term durability.

To hear some owners tell it, buying an aircraft battery is like playing the lottery: You buy your ticket, cross your fingers and wait around to see what happens. Some owners-those lucky enough to get five years out of a battery-ask whats the big deal? But the poor sap who buys two batteries in as many years has a more cynical view. Is this any way to run an industry? Were not sure, but our tests and owner surveys reveal a wide disparity-not to mention a vein of customer ire-in battery performance and longevity. In this article, we’ll examine aircraft battery options to make sense of it all. Upfront, we’ll say that the smart money rides on sealed battery designs from Concorde, with flooded models from Concorde as second choice and Gill flooded products a close third

What exactly is the difference between a factory rebuilt, a factory overhaul and a field overhauled engine? And is opting for the factory version worth the extra money? As the engine overhaul business has become ever more competitive, there’s even more confusion about the difference between categories and sources. Hardly a month goes by when someone doesnt phone to ask: “here are the numbers the shops are giving me. What should I do?”

Although aircraft batteries arent high on our list of things to worry about, that isn’t the case for many owners, given the volume of reader mail we receive on this subject. Battery chargers figure into this concern, too, and following our report on this topic in January 2006, the subject has become, improbably controversial, spurred along by some new technological developments. By virtue of customer complaints about Gill sealed batteries, our previously recommended battery charger choice, the Battery Tender Plus by Deltran Corp., has been withdrawn from the aviation market and another company, VDC Electronics, has introduced an aviation-specific design based on charging profiles from the Concorde Battery Company. Our tests of this device show that its promising, with circuitry that reduces the peak charging voltage limit and lowers the float voltage for aviation AGM batteries.