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's aircraft heater appeared to malfunction after landing in freezing temperatures, emitting smoke and then providing no heat, effectively grounding the plane during a holiday trip.
Despite extensive troubleshooting efforts involving multiple mechanics and remote consultations over several days, initial attempts to fix the complex Janitrol heater were unsuccessful.
The core issue was eventually identified as an oversight: the heater's fuel pump required the right wing's boost pump to be active, a critical step that had been missed during all previous diagnostic tests.
Once the correct procedure was followed, the heater functioned perfectly, revealing that the initial smoke was merely residual fuel burning off and the prolonged repair efforts were largely unnecessary due to a misunderstanding of the system's operating requirements.

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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.