I suppose these reports of schools banning leaning from right at the top “management” level are just more damning indictments of the UK PPL training scene, which ultimately are largely responsible for the vast majority of new PPLs chucking it in before the first revalidation…
And then people wonder why GA is declining. Some 90%+ of UK PPLs can’t even get to Le Touquet.
Peter wrote:
Some 90%+ of UK PPLs can’t even get to Le Touquet.
It is just a hop, but I’ve never been to L2K
Silvaire wrote:
The large Continentals seem to be the engines that are the focus of a lot of ‘lean of peak’ discussion, they have specific characteristics that understanding trends from the study of another engine cannot address, and what seems to be published for those engines is only a little more than guess work.
That’s probably because they’re the only engines built well enough to have a well-balanced AFR across all cylinders (and therefore able to run LOP without falling apart), not magic metallurgy “specific characteristics”.
You cannot accurately infer exhaust valve temperature on any engine design from correlations established in testing of a different engine design.
Large Lycomings are obviously run LOP too, but they aren’t fitted to Cirruses and Bonanzas that get a lot of attention in this regard.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
AFR
?
AFR is an acronym used by car and motorcycle people for Air to Fuel Ratio.
Some general comments:
If the POHs was giving more decisive input about the need and procedure to lean correctly, people would probably use the red lever more. When it is only ever mentioned in a 4 line paragraph out of 300 pages, and the final sentence is “when in doubt, run full rich”, then we should maybe not be surprised people don’t do it.
Conversely, when the POH tells me to lean to peak EGT (on lower power engines that is sometimes the case, like a 160hp O-320 Lyc), I expect it to be appropriate setting.
Europe is too flat and low altitude, everybody should do a high-DA course where leaning is not merely a recommendation but a requirement.
One has to remember that the biggest advancement in leaning managment is the proliferation of decent engine monitoring.
Without it, you really could not be sure that you were’nt doing any harm.
I agree that you could only do it with low enough power settings that would keep you out of the “red box” (or “red fin” depending on how it is presented) at any mixture setting, if you don’t have an engine monitor. This should be possible though, but I know people who would still object to it at low power (or even on the ground…).
Michael wrote:
One has to remember that the biggest advancement in leaning managment is the proliferation of decent engine monitoring.Without it, you really could not be sure that you were’nt doing any harm.
I have decent engine monitoring equipment, a JPI, but don’t use it for leaning. I do use the JPI for diagnostic purposes, but would be totally comfortable without it for any leaning tasks.
