Get Your Hands Dirty: Why Every Piper, Cessna, and Beechcraft Owner Should Do an Owner-Assisted Annual

troyemmett1
Sep 17
3 min read

Your Airplane Talks—Learn to Listen

Your horizontally-opposed piston engine is not a mysterious box of magic. It’s essentially a tough little tractor engine from the 1950s, and it talks to you well in advance when something’s wrong:

Oil consumption slowly creeping up
Cylinder head temps trending hotter
A subtle change in the exhaust note
A little more vibration on climb-out

But you won’t notice these clues if you’re never around your airplane except to fly it. Helping with the annual inspection teaches you what “normal” looks like—and that means you’ll spot “not normal” before it becomes a crisis.

Save Money While You Save Lives

In a separate sentence: knowing your systems saves you lots of money.

When you’re present during the inspection, you’ll catch problems when they’re $200 fixes instead of $2,000 disasters. You’ll stop paying for “shotgun maintenance” where parts get replaced simply because the manual says so. And you’ll make smarter decisions about what needs to be done now versus what can safely wait.

Mike Busch’s Advice: Inspect Smarter, Not Harder

Mike Busch—AOPA columnist and author of Manifesto and Mike Busch on Airplane Ownership—is famous for challenging the “full tear-down every 12 months” mentality. In his September 2024 column, he wrote:

“Why is it necessary to have my airplane completely torn apart every 12 months? I’ve only flown about 40 hours since the last annual inspection.”

Busch points out that we don’t inspect this way because physics demands it—large airplanes aren’t required to do it—but because regulations do. His advice: focus most attention forward of the firewall, where the heat, vibration, and risk live.

Borescopes Are the New Gold Standard

Forget the old compression test as your only cylinder health metric. Busch calls borescopes the “gold standard” for engine diagnostics. Today’s borescopes cost under $300 and give crystal-clear images of valves, piston crowns, and cylinder walls.

When you get involved, you can:

Spot a burned exhaust valve before it fails in flight
Free up stuck rings with a solvent flush instead of pulling the jug
Build a visual history of your cylinders and spot trends before they become expensive

As Busch notes, most A&Ps were never formally taught how to do a proper borescope inspection—so your involvement ensures it gets done and done right.

Four Big Reasons to Assist in Your Annual

Catch Mistakes Before They Catch You Being present reduces the chance something gets missed or reassembled wrong.
Learn Your Airplane’s Personality You’ll know which cylinders run hot, which fittings seep, and which ADs matter most.
Build Maintenance Data Trends Compression, oil analysis, borescope photos—when you see them year after year, you become your airplane’s historian.
Have Smarter Conversations with Your IA Mechanics respect engaged owners who ask the right questions and make informed decisions.

Be a Test Pilot After Maintenance

Mike Busch reminds us that the most dangerous flight of the year is the one right after maintenance. Don’t just launch cross-country—do a taxi test, a run-up, and a short pattern flight first. Think of it as “first flight of the prototype” every year.

Bottom Line

Doing an owner-assisted annual isn’t just about saving shop labor rates—it’s about becoming the true “owner-in-command” of your airplane. It makes you safer, keeps your wallet happier, and ensures your Piper, Cessna, or Beechcraft stays flying strong for years to come.

Ready to Go Beyond the Annual?

At T&C Aviation, we know airplanes because we buy, sell, and appraise them every day. If you’re curious what your airplane is worth in today’s market—or ready to sell fast—get a free real-time aircraft valuation from us.

Let’s make your airplane ownership smarter, safer, and more profitable.