When it comes to General Aviation maintenance on piston-powered airplanes, Mike Busch literally wrote the book. And he’s also rewriting how small plane maintenance is performed, through the many service he offers through his Savvy Aviation company. Recently I sat down with Mike and interviewed him on the Aviation News Talk podcast to learn more about his transition from a career in high tech to general aviation, and about his latest book, Mike Bush on Engines: What every aircraft owner needs to know about the design, operation, condition monitoring, maintenance and troubleshooting of piston aircraft engines.
Mike was born in New York City and grew up in the northeast. After majoring in math at Dartmouth College, he did graduate work in math and business, and soon after moved to the West coast, where he’s been ever since. After college, he worked in the computer industry as a software developer, and he managed major software development projects for corporations including Computer Sciences Corporation, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR, Phillips, and Visa.
In 1995, he began working full-time in the aviation industry, where he cofounded avweb.com, a well-known aviation news web site. He’s also a prolific writer of articles on maintenance that have appeared in many General Aviation magazines including his monthly maintenance column, “Savvy Maintenance” in AOPA Pilot magazine. You can learn more about Mike and his transition to a career in aviation in episode 64 of the Aviation News Talk podcast.
Mike’s first book was Manifesto, A Revolutionary Approach to General Aviation Maintenance. That book, which is 112 pages long, talks about Mike’s crusade to promote Reliability Centered Maintenance within General Aviation. Reliability Centered Maintenance came out of United Airlines back in the late 1960s, but hasn’t yet made major inroads into how general aviation airplanes are maintained. One of its major tenets is that we shouldn't be doing maintenance after a specific number of hours have elapsed, but should instead have condition monitoring programs that determine the condition of various aircraft components and only perform maintenance when a component is in trouble.
In May 2018, Mike Bush on Engines was released. I purchased the book when it was released and have learned a lot since I started reading it. Mike spent about a year writing the book and as a starting point, he pulled material from his many years as a magazine columnist. As an aside, Mike and I both debuted as monthly columnists in EAA Sport Magazine in January 2010. But the book is NOT simply a collection of articles. It’s a well thought out and organized tutorial on general aviation aircraft maintenance in general, and engine maintenance in particular.
In addition to teaching the reader about the many engine components and how to operate engines properly, he talks about the missing art of troubleshooting as a general practice in general aviation. In my interview with Mike he said, “Mechanics seem to be strong in the therapy department and weak in the diagnosis department.” According to Mike “A&P mechanics are the surgeons of general aviation maintenance, and they attack airplanes with tools,” which is what they’re comfortable doing. Instead, he feels there needs to be more emphasis on accurate diagnosis and less emphasis on attacking airplanes with tools.
Mike Busch on Engines is an easy read that’s presented in non-technical terms, so that most any pilot can understand it. Whether you start at the beginning and read the entire book, or just bounce around from topic to topic as I did, you’ll surely have fun reading it and learn a lot in the process! I highly recommend both of his books to all pilots.
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