A funny thing happened to me on a coast-to-coast trip in my Cessna T310R from California to the East coast. I was headed from my home base in Santa Maria to teach a weekend seminar in Frederick, Md., and then to Atlanta to teach another seminar the following weekend.I first became aware of the problem as I was climbing out of Santa Maria on the very first leg of what I expected to be a 30-hour round-trip. I had reduced to my usual 75% cruise-climb power, was climbing at my usual 130 KIAS cruise-climb airspeed, and had leaned to the usual 110 pounds/hour fuel flow on each engine. This was all standard routine that I'd performed hundreds of times before.The engines felt smooth. The airplane was climbing nicely at about 1,000 FPM despite being loaded right at max gross. The air was smooth. My Garmin 396 satellite weather display indicated no significant weather all the way to Tulsa, where I planned to make an overnight stop before continuing on to Frederick. The 396's XM audio was tuned to the classical music channel, piping one of my favorite Bach Brandenburg Concertos into my stereo ANR headset. All seemed right with the world.My reverie was interrupted by a flashing amber annunciator light that told me my JPI EDM-760 digital engine analyzer was trying to get my attention. Sure enough, when I looked over at the JPI instrument on the right side of the panel, its display was flashing a high turbine inlet temperature (TIT) alarm on the left engine, and displaying the TIT as 1620 F. I know from experience that normal TIT in this configuration is around 1570 F and I've programmed the JPI to alarm any time the TIT exceeds 1600 F.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/the-savvy-aviator-39-temperamental-ignition