It was a beautiful Tuesday morning at KSHD, and we had the maintenance hangar door open with a good view of the runway. A nice, red and white Piper Lance made a perfect landing on runway 5. As the airplane taxied up to the ramp, I thought, “It would be nice to meet that guy, whoever he is.”

Momentarily, he was standing in our shop, asking if we could help with an electrical issue. It turned out Merle was a super nice gentleman, and he had flown in with his brother, Dave, and their colleague Ron. They were on their way to Pennsylvania that morning, but made a precautionary landing at Shenandoah Valley because of the electrical failure.

I was eager to help. I grabbed my multimeter and hopped in the airplane. When I tried to start the engine, all I got was a small and very feeble attempt to turn the engine and prop. The battery was too weak to run the engine.

I remove the cowling and got access to the alternator. After removing the field wire from the field terminal on the alternator, I turned the master and alternator switches on and verified there was battery voltage at the field wire. I was then satisfied the voltage regulator was working fine, and the problem was likely in the alternator or the wiring circuit.

I then measured the resistance between the alternator field terminal and ground, and at first I got a resistance reading, but when I moved the prop a bit, I had no continuity. There should be a resistance reading, maybe around 6 ohms, give or take a little, for a 12 volt alternator. At this point, I was 90% sure the alternator was bad.

We started searching, and found a local parts supplier had an overhauled alternator, and also one that was “as removed.” Merle opted for the overhauled one, and one of our guys made the short drive to pick it up.

Unfortunately, that alternator had a crack in the bolt hole for attaching the alternator belt tension arm.

We ended up overnighting another overhauled alternator in, and got them going the next day.

It was great meeting these guys! Merle, Ron, and Dave… if you’re ever passing through again, stop in and say hi, and maybe we can go grab a burger at the Old School Burger bus down at the Valley Pike Farm Market.

On a totally different subject, I also talked in this podcast episode about an Aerostar trip we made to Wisconsin this week… not much of an FBO at this little airport near Lake Geneva, WI.

Be sure to listen to the episode to find out about an interesting phenomenon I learned about on the return trip… a momentary harmonic vibration in the clouds.

That’s all for this episode!

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