August 2004
Cessna 206
Subscribers Only A heavy hauler with plenty of cabin room and enough speed for cross-continental trips.
ECI Cylinder AD
Subscribers Only ECI is recalling and replacing a total of 2000 cylinders for Continental engines. A new AD will make it mandatory.
AvMap EKP III C
Subscribers Only With its large screen and kneeboard-type design, we think this navigator is both underated and under marketed.
Adam A700 Twin Jet
Subscribers Only Following a conservative certification path and with a familiar engine, the A700 may lead the pack in deliveries.
Buying a Run-out
Subscribers Only An airplane with a run-out engine is usually a good buy. But don’t rule out a nice panel as a purchase driver.
XM 3, Orbcomm 1
Subscribers Only In a head-to-head flyoff against a squall line, datalink from WSI and XM Radio outperform Avidyne’s Orbcomm system.
Letters: 08/04
FlightPrep Retort I’d like to clarify a couple of points in The Aviation Consumer’s review of online flight planners in an otherwise excellent article. While the article was generally complimentary of our product, it left the mixed impression that except for price, FlightPrep and our competitor were pretty much the same in terms of features. Although the author mentioned some of the differences in the review, she came to the conclusion that she really did not have a strong preference. I’m not sure whether she appreciated some of the differences. Actually, FlightPrep and our competitor are quite different. While our competitor is a static Web page flight planner—charts are a...
First Word: 08/04
Avidyne’s Dilemma Companies that sell high technology sometimes lose sight of the fact that when it doesn’t work—at all, let alone correctly some of the time—buyers become profoundly disgusted. Sometimes irretrievably. In my view, some of Avidyne’s datalink customers appear to be getting to that point. As we report on page 4 of this issue, we’ve been getting an earful from some of them about what they view as poor performance of Avidyne’s Orbcomm-based weather datalink system. The receiver for this system is standard equipment in Avidyne’s latest color MFD, the EX500. With the addition of an antenna and a service subscription, datalinked weather is at your fingertips. Except...
Gear of the Year: 2004
Subscribers Only A warts-and-all, no apologies listing of the best products and services we’ve seen this year.