Part 6 of 9: Cessna Annual 172P - magneto services

Blogger had an outage on May 12 and I have (temporarily) lost the posts that I made on Wed. May 11 including "part 6 of 9: Cessna Annual 172P - magneto services." I am reposting this now, out of order. Thanks for your patience.

I will write about the magneto service here, and will continue discussing magnetos when I write about the engine and propeller service in part 7 of 9. The  three photos below show the magneto service.

I watched Brent do the magneto service over the course of about 30 to 60 minutes (I think). I enjoyed watching him work. Unfortunately, I spent most of the time listening, and did not take a lot of notes. Sometimes it is better to just watch and listen. so, I regret that I don’t have more to say about this service. Perhaps I’ll have an opportunity to watch him do another magneto inspection in the future.

However, while Brent was talking, I did make some notes about what the magneto does. Single-engine planes such as the Cessna 172P have two magnetos. Simply, they are self contained ignition systems. One of the items on the pre-takeoff check is checking that both magnetos are operating on their own. If one of the magnetos doesn't work, you are grounded. While you only need one magneto for flight, you always want to go up with two working magnetos. You do not want to take off with only one working magneto and risk having that one working magneto fail in flight. It may not be a good outcome.