My first in-flight mechanical failure

A Lieberman wrote:


snip
My rational for this would be why change a configuration for what appeared
to be a good running engine especially when you were able to cool the
engine temperature with mixture?

A valid point. I had typed this wordy response, but looking back at the
incident, it was much more simple: Given the severe clear, nearby
airports, and high altitude, I believed I had many options in the event
of a complete engine failure and didn't see the risk in testing the
mags.

One only need to recall the Alaska Air accident off the coast of
California to understand that too much troubleshooting can sometimes be
fatal.

I am curious, had it been hard IFR, would you have check the mags???

Hmmmm... I would be *much* more conservative in hard IFR. In fact, I
most likely would have declared an emergency. The key point to
understand in my actual scenario is that I had many options. In hard
IFR, I would not have had but a few.

--
Peter