LancairTalk

It looks like I fixed the CO issue myself yesterday. I returned to PDX to pick up the airplane
with the intention of flying it back to BFI. I did a careful preflight and caught something that I must
have missed the previous flight- the hose attached to the air intake on the right of the cowl was a bit
folded up inside and not securely connected. I’m pretty sure that was the cause of the leak- I removed half the cowl
so I could get my hands in there and reattached the hose. The return flight to BFI was fine from a carbon
monoxide point of view although I’m still having something strange going on with the EGT on cylinder 1 when
I’m flying LOP.

Two conclusions from this- first of all I’d recommend that everyone be careful to make inspecting the intake
(with a flashlight- look in to the hose connection) part of the preflight every time. Second, while I probably
would have bought a CO detector if it wasn’t built in, I might not have, so in the end I’m very grateful to whomever
at Columbia decided to make this standard equipment on the Columbia 400- they may have just saved my life last
Thursday. For anyone who doesn’t have a built-in CO detector I’d consider having an accessory one manditory equipment.

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Today’s flight was a bit “exciting” in that way that you really don’t want to get excited while flying. I was
taking a short (3 hour) flight to San Jose for some business meetings. I had just leveled off at FL190 when the
CO (Carbon Monoxide) light came on. Uh oh. So I pressed the reset button, and bing it came on again. Tried a few
things and it was still coming on.

At this point it was time to get on the radio. I was just about 40 miles from Portland and I knew it would
be helpful to have a commercial flight available to get me to California. So I asked center to divert to Portland
and told them I had a CO warning light. They cleared me direct and to descend right away and were even so helpful
as to declare an emergency for me. At some point the light wasn’t going on anymore and I thought maybe the problem had
gone away, but I noticed at this point that the EGT of cylinder 1 wasn’t in line with the rest of the pack so
that clinched it for me. A 2500fpm descent brought me nicely in to PDX (while keeping myself within glide range)
and the nice yellow trucks escorted me to the ramp (although I did assure everyone I was ok on touch-down).

From this little fun, I have a few follow up thoughts. First of all, I was on an O2 mask at the time, and I’m
curious how much the O2 would help if there were a serious CO problem going on. I turned up my O2 flow and never
felt a thing, but given that the mask is designed to mix in cabin air, I’m not sure how much it would actually protect
you.

Second, the folks at the Flight Craft terminal at PDX were great. They helped me hop on a computer to make
a commercial reservation and were ready to shuttle me over to the commercial terminal right away. I’m a little
less happy with the maintenance folks who have apparently decided that they can’t fit into their busy schedule
looking at my airplane and figuring out what’s wrong with it. Given that the flight out of Portland to San Jose
took awhile to leave and in the end as late as I was an extra hour or two wouldn’t have been worse, I probably
should have landed in Redmond which was almost as close and has much nicer maintenance people. Oh well,
the last thing I’m going to do is try to second-guess my decisions about where to land with a potential
emergency.

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