Not Everything Breaks at the Worst Possible Moment

After shutting down the engines I still have lots more switches to turn off, paperwork to do, and some tidying to do in the cockpit. I see the engineer and the PRM looking at the left engine nacelle. But it's the right one that has the leak. I open the window and they say the same thing, "I thought you said it was the right one that was leaking."

"It is," I tell them. "I left with it clean, so what you see is just from the one flight. Also the left tach is dead.

"The left one? I though it was the right one that had the problem."

"It was. But the right one is still going strong."

Apparently the left engine was feeling left out with all that concern about the right one, and wants some attention, too. I have a moment of irrational worry that a broken left tach cable somehow left a trail of havoc inside the engine, but I know it's inside a channel, separated from everything else. And apparently from itself now.

While I gather my belongings inside the airplane, they hook the airplane up to a 1950s vintage Ford tractor and haul it into the hangar. The engineer and a couple of apprentices swarm over it and start pulling it apart. The right oil leak was exactly what they had field diagnosed it to be, something to do with an O-ring, but clearly not as disastrous as what happened to Challenger. I'm glad I don't fly this thing in outer space. I don't remember if they told me what the new leak was, but I had three different people come up and ask me, "Did you have propeller control during the flight?"

Now that's a pretty bizarre question, along the lines of "were you able to shift gears during your trip?" to the driver of a car. I told each one yes, and assured them that, had I lost control of propeller RPM at any point during the flight, it would have been one of the first things I reported after landing. It turns out that during their routine check of all engine controls from the cockpit, the right propeller lever does not control the propeller. They later showed me a broken end of the cable. I told them about the momentary difficulty I had in the run-up, but that the RPM came back normally for cruise. It's possible that the cable broke at that power adjustment, because when I sync props it is my habit to move only the left one until the beats match. The propellers both went full fine for landing, but apparently the broken cable ends would have pushed together and worked the mechanism. More likely the cable broke at the moment they tested it in the hangar. Sometimes things break at the right time.

I give them my big list of everything this airplane has complained about lately, and drag my luggage out of the shop into the lobby, where there turns out to be doughnuts. Life is now good.