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July 2009 
Extended Warranties: Worth it for Avionics?Several of the major avionics manufacturers are offering extended warranty coverage for their high-end products. What may initially seem like a hard sell could ultimately save you a ton of dough. It’s no secret that modern avionics are far from cheap, but out-of-warranty repairs and associated troubleshooting can be shockingly expensive. Even a basic factory repair on a modern navcomm radio can top $1000. Many consumers are skeptical of buying into warranty coverage. The sad fact is that extended warranties for radios, like nearly any other product, are a crap shoot. But before you tell José, "no way," you need to consider the potential for savings plus the perceived value it might add to the aircraft if you try to sell it. To make the correct decision in buying warranty coverage, you need to understand the potential costs for both minor and major repairs. For example, the display replacement for a Bendix/King KX155A navcomm radio will usually cost upwards of $500, even for a field repair. A meter failure in a KI209 navigational indicator essentially reduces the unit to throw-away status (this indicator is worth $2000 in factory-new condition). Repairs to an Avidyne EX5000 MFD that’s out of warranty will yield a repair cost of $2250, and the turn-around time could be two weeks. Diamond DA42-L360: Lycoming Reborn When Diamond was hard into its certification of the DA42 Twin Star in 2005, it knew it was taking a big chance on the untried Thielert 1.7 diesel engines. But it also hedged its bets by running a near parallel certification effort of the same airplane fitted with Lycoming’s angle-valve IO-360, a well proven powerplant. It back-burnered the Lycoming project once it appeared that the diesel engines were both preferred and were gaining ground in the market. It now appears as though the Lycoming hedge is paying off, by necessity. As is well known by now, the Thielert diesels turned out to have a spotty service record at best, a disastrous one at worst. The engine required numerous periodic replacement parts—mainly gearboxes and clutches—but also lots of unscheduled (and expensive) maintenance that all but tanked the 1.7 diesels as serious contenders. As we go to press this month, Diamond is finishing certification details on the resurrected Lycoming project under its new version of the airplane, the DA42-L360. (The trade name Twin Star has been dropped because of a trademark dispute with a helicopter manufacturer.) The Lycomings will be offered as an option in place of the newly certified Austro AE300, which Diamond also brought to fruition by launching a company just for that purpose. The new engines will be available for both new aircraft and owners of existing Thielert diesel models who may wish to convert. (We suspect many will.) Electronic Tachs: UMA is a Top Value If you’re like us, you’re flying around in something built during the last century but lusting after some of the panel-mounted goodies available in newer aircraft. While it’s easy enough to shoehorn in a color moving map and some digital radios, modernizing other areas of your panel isn’t. And that’s a shame, since much of the engine and systems instrumentation in older aircraft appears borrowed from a 1947 Buick. But, as usual, the aftermarket has provided in the form of engine monitors, fuel flow instruments and a smattering of tachometers. The tach market is not widely populated, so if you want one, the choices are somewhat limited. Here’s a run-down on the pros and cons of this technology, plus a look at the major players in the field. Of course, the microprocessor in digital instruments does little more than count. Conveniently, a mechanical tachometer does the same thing. The big difference between the two involves how they receive a signal: The microprocessor counts electrical impulses sent to it via wiring, while the mechanical tachometer’s many moving parts count the number of times a cable attached to the engine revolves. The former is lighter, more accurate and less likely to fail, at least as long as the aircraft’s electrical system powers the microprocessor. The latter is none of those things. Tempest Dehydrator: Inexpensive, Effective Think of Florida on a warm afternoon in July and you’ve got a good grasp of what your engine crankcase is like after you shut down after a flight. Throw in a little acid rain to season the heat and humidity to complete the picture. In short, the inside of an engine can be the perfect Petri dish for corrosion. Engine dehydrators or preservers are designed to address this by either pumping dry air into the engine, or sucking the humid miasma out of the crankcase and replacing it with moisture-free air. The idea has enough credence for three companies to have introduced dehydrator products. The latest comes from Tempest/Aero group, which adds a dehydrator to its well-regarded line of dry vacuum pumps and oil filters. The AA1000 Engine Preservation Systems retails for $235. Like the other engine preservers, the Tempest dehydrator pumps dry air into the engine after first passing it through a silica gel desiccant. The device consists of a small plastic enclosure about the size of small fishing tackle box—it may actually be a tackle box, by the looks of it—divided into two compartments. One compartment serves as a cell to contain the desiccant, which consists of about a pound of tiny blue beads. You just pour them in the box, making sure that the filtered pickup tube is near the bottom of the desiccant. The other two thirds of the box houses a small, continuous duty low-volume air pump powered by line voltage. A clear plastic tube exits the pump to be inserted into the crankcase oil filler. Gear of the Year: Super SportCub When Thomas Paine was writing about times that try men’s souls, he was actually referring to the American Revolution, but that’s nothing compared to GA sales figures for the first quarter. No one’s jumping out of buildings yet. But then again, hangars don’t have second stories. Okay, so 2009 hasn’t been so hot thus far, but like everyone involved in aviation, we’re optimists and we sense a turnaround in the wind. In any case, pilots and owners are still buying things so it’s time for our annual review of the best products and services we’ve seen during the past calendar year. When we reviewed our reviews for the past 12 months, we were surprised to find more new stuff than we’ve typically seen in a year. Here’s our roundup of the most recommended things we tried this year. We’re normally cautious about effusing too much about products with no market history, but we’re making an exception for this one. CubCrafter’s Super SportCub merits this treatment because in the LSA world, it’s truly innovative. It has a true ASTM engine—at 180 HP, a big one—and the concept of an uncompromised, hotrod LSA hasn’t been offered by anyone else. The trouble with the LSA segment is that one white plastic airplane with high wings looks like any other white plastic airplane with high wings and we see a new one of them every week. The Super SportCub is thus in a league unto itself and deserves notice for that. For more, see www.cubcrafters.com Garmin’s 696 Trainer: Simple and Effective There’s a saying that good design obviates the need for training. That’s been generally true of the Garmin portables and is basically true for the supersized GPSMAP 696. The added capability does increase complexity, and a little training can go a long way toward getting the most out of your investment. Garmin has put its hat into the training fray with the GPSMAP 696/965 eLearning Program. The product tis actually produced by the same company that developed the successful Vflite training CD-ROMs for the GNS 430/530 units and that created the G1000 training currently sold by Jeppesen. Just like those programs, this one walks you through the pages and functions of the unit with an animated mock-up of the GPS (complete with all button-pushes and knob-twists), written text and narration. The lessons are organized by the GPS pages and the phases of flight in which you would use them. However, when the program needs to show you an example from some other part of the country, it does so. You can skip ahead to any lesson you want, and you can turn off the narration and just skim the text if you want to zip through the lessons faster. Used Aircraft Guide: Cessna 337 Skymaster In the light-twin world, there’s Cessna’s 337 Skymaster push-me/pull-you design—plus a handful of Adam 500s—and then there’s everything else. Eliminating asymmetric thrust from the single-engine handling equation was what Cessna had in mind when it brought the Skymaster to market. It succeeded, since the airplane handles pretty much the same when one or both engines are turning. But some compromises were made along the way, many of which can hike maintenance costs. In an engine-out situation, conventional piston twins generally need to be handled with kid gloves lest the airplane get too slow and roll over on its back. Close to the ground, that can be very bad. Which is one reason Cessna aligned the Skymaster’s two engines with the airframe centerline, offering pilots the safety of a second engine without the penalty of adverse handling. If one quits, identify it, feather it and don’t worry about the dead-foot, dead-engine drill. The FAA even granted the 337 its own class rating, limiting pilots to centerline-thrust twins only. That part of Cessna’s plan worked, since there’s little question the Skymaster is easier to fly on a single engine than a conventional twin. But, since the VMC rollover accident doesn’t happen that often in the real world, the airplane’s overall accident record isn’t that much better than conventional twins. |
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