After 44 years of writing aviation maintenance articles, columns, and blogs, Mike Busch has penned his first book, Manifesto, which spells out his approach to general aviation maintenance, ownership, and safety.
The 112-page book is available in print or online from Amazon, and it’s the first in a series of five books than Busch is planning.
Manifesto is “more about my philosophy than nuts and bolts,” Busch said.
Busch is the founder and CEO of Savvy Maintenance, a firm that manages aircraft maintenance for mostly single-engine piston aircraft owners and pilots. Savvy recently started a nationwide program for pre-buy inspections in which the company acts as an advocate for buyers.
“First-time buyers are babes in the woods, and they’re frequently taken advantage of,” said Busch, who charges $750 for an inspection. “We can spare them a lot of agony.”
Many sellers are represented by professional brokers, and Busch said Savvy puts buyers and sellers on more equal footing.
“These can be emotional decisions, and both the buyer and the seller need adult supervision,” he said.
Busch also developed a computer program that analyzes digital engine data and can predict impending exhaust valve failures—one of the leading causes of power loss in piston aircraft engines.
The program known as FEVA (failing exhaust valve analytics) is free for some Savvy Maintenance customers.
Savvy has collected a database of more than 600,000 flights in 4,500 general aviation aircraft and can mine it for trends.
“Nobody in the history of GA has ever aggregated this data before,” Busch said. “FEVA is our first deployed product, but all kinds of things are going to come out of this.”
For example, Savvy plans to give its customers a quarterly “report card” showing how pilots are operating their engines compared to others in the database.
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