Gear Up: Out in the Cold

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 03:08 AM ET

Verified

** Cold and broken down in New Hampshire, or
so I thought. A week later, we're good to go
for our flight back to Florida.**

Key Takeaways:

A pilot experienced an apparent heater malfunction in very cold conditions, which initially presented as smoke and rendered the aircraft unflyable.
Extensive troubleshooting involving multiple mechanics, both on-site and remotely, failed to resolve the issue for several days.
The problem was ultimately traced to a simple operational oversight: the heater's fuel pump requires the right wing's boost pump to be active, a condition that had been overlooked during diagnostics.
Once the correct procedure was followed, the heater worked perfectly, allowing the pilot to safely and comfortably fly home after significant effort and delay.

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It was cold at altitude: minus 39 degrees C. It was cold when we landed too: 9 degrees F. As I shut the Cheyenne down, I cautioned my wife, Cathy, to stay in the airplane until I could get the car and come get her and the dog, Corbett. She needed no persuading.

Just then a wisp of white smoke caught my peripheral vision. It seemed to come from the right side of the nose of the airplane. I got out, closing the airstair door behind me to keep whatever heat we had in the cabin. Sure enough, a small amount of white acrid-smelling smoke was coming out of what looked like a breather tube just forward of the heater exhaust. The heater exhaust is easy to spot on all Cheyennes because a trail of exhaust stains the fuselage behind it, in a pattern like the tail of a comet.