December 2003
Beech 33 Debonair
Subscribers Only It’s a Bonanza in everything but name. The Deb outlasted and eventually replaced the venerable V-tail.
Battery Buying Advice
Subscribers Only AGM technology is the best choice these days. Here’s a primer on making the right choice.
Used Storm Gear
Subscribers Only Datalink may be creating a glut of used sferics devices but shop carefully. Strike Finder and WX-950 are top picks.
RAM Mount Flight Test
Subscribers Only If you can puzzle out the catalog options, you’ll find a well-designed mount for every purpose.
Owner Satisfaction
Subscribers Only Both companies earn praise for good customer support and warranty performance.
Cirrus versus Diamond
Subscribers Only In a warts-and-all flyoff between the SR20 and DA40 Star, Cirrus wins on capability but the Diamond flies better.
Letters: 12/03
WSI Fan We just put a WSI Inflight displayed on a MX-20 in our Malibu. It is a fantastic piece of gear. It completely eliminates the need for a Stormscope—we spent seven grand on a WX-500, too—and it is really better than onboard radar due to the panning feature, which lets you look ahead (or around) as far as you want. The articles that talk about the need for both are just wrong and I suspect are driven by the same thought process that sold us on putting in the WX-500 and were originated by those who want to sell more avionics gear. The signal is almost never more than two minutes old and I have never seen it older than four minutes. The 1 nm resolution is sufficient bu...
Richard B. Weeghman: 1928-2003
Subscribers Only [IMGCAP(1)] When pressed, any hard-bitten magazine editor might concede that publications like this one are more than ink on paper. In concert with the whims and desires of their readers, they become living entities with distinct lives of their own. But in the end, it’s the editor who breathes life into the thing. A good one makes all the difference, elevating the everyday to the exceptional, the exceptional to the extraordinary. One of the best died the other day here in Florida, not a mile from where I’m sitting in Sarasota. Richard B. Weeghman—all of us knew him as Dick—was 75 years old and succumbed to a sudden illness. He was editor-in-chief of Aviation Consumer from 1976 to 1994. I...