Hello IFC, This topic is a bit different today, As pilots, we are trained to notice things about our aircraft that might seem unusual.
So today I bring you a little flying experience that happened to me a while back ago. Now let me put in a disclaimer that i was alot newer of a pilot than i am today and this did not happen recently.
It was a brisk and cold windy morning at my local airport, I met my buddy at the airplane i fly for some practice approaches. there was a moderate north wind about 10 knots that day. We departed runway 1 for an Rnav approach into the opposite runway 19. After a few approaches back and forth, i noticed a severe decrease in power output and climb rate. Leveling off at about 2000 feet, i then noticed a roughness with the engine. I turned to my friend asking him about it and agreed with me that it was rough, we made a turn back to the airport, while trying to figure what was wrong. Pulling the power back to a cruise setting and leaning the mixture helped the roughness of the engine a bit. After letting the engine warm up some, we returned the mixture to full and kept the power the same.
After a few more minutes, this returned. Know nowing that the mixture wont help in this case since it returned, i pulled the carb heat and all of a sudden you here this crackling that sounds like popcorn popping. After a few seconds, the crackling and popping stopped and the engine returned to full power output and we continued the day with 2 hours and 6 approaches in the logbook.
Let me know down below your stories and experiences below in the comments. All comments offtopic will be flagged and dont comment unless you have had an actual story from the cockpit