January, 2012
Used Aircraft Guide: Cessna Cardinal RG
Subscribers Only At EAA Airventure in 2006, a mysterious airplane made a low flyby, arriving unannounced. It turned out to be the Cessna NGP, the now-tabled high-performance follow-on to the popular 210 that Cessna dropped from the line in 1986. But at a glance, it was easy to mistake the airplane for something else: the Cessna 177 Cardinal RG. And many observers did. Although introduced 40 years ago, in 1971, the Cardinal RG remains one of the sleekest and most attractive highwing airplanes ever marketed. Despite its age, it retains a loyal following. It’s easy to see why. The RG is one of the best compromises for its class in terms of speed, payload, cost of ownership and economy.
AeroFusion Additive: Didn’t Work for Us
Subscribers Only Everyone wants it to be true; let there be a long-lost secret that reverses aging, cures the flu overnight or squeezes 50 more miles out of every tank of gasoline. Trying fuel additives is rather like buying the occasional lottery ticket. You know the odds tower against you, but what if this one is a winner? When we met Keith Lange at Oshkosh last summer, he enthusiastically offered us two bottles of AeroFusion to test and review. He did so without qualification or condition, and we got the feeling he honestly believed in his product. He sells it with a 100-percent money-back guarantee, which not something you’d do if you expected unhappy customers. We said we’d give it a try.
Good Glass Deals: Skyhawks and DA40s
Cirrus models with the Avidyne Entegra first appeared in 2003. But there aren’t many of them. Prices might be better on 2005 models.
Subscribers Only We’re a long way from every cockpit having some form of a glass panel, but we’re getting there. Aftermarket installations of products like Aspen’s Evolution and Garmin’s G500 are making inroads and as some airplanes head for the scrap heap (or Brazil), the percentage of glass cockpits slowly grows. If you want glass, the cheapest, least painful way may be to simply shop the used market for the first airplanes that got glass panels, meaning 2003 to about 2007. These airframes have taken their predictable depreciation nosedive, but many of them are still a long way from the ratted-out phase.
Retrofit Fuel Computers: Auracle and EI Excel
Subscribers Only The reoccurring head-shaker in the NTSB reports is the pilot who wrecks a perfectly functioning aircraft because of mismanaged fuel burn. But the truth is that eventually even the most conservative gets tempted to push the envelope of fuel endurance. That’s why a fuel computer installation makes sense, and there’s one for every budget. Speaking of budget, fuel computers assist with miserly leaning—a real plus in the world of pricey low lead.
VoiceFlight VFS101: Talk to Your GPS
The one-pound VFS101 box can be blind mounted. All you need in the cockpit is a breaker, a USB port to update the data and a VoiceFlight Activation Switch (VAS) to make the unit listen for your command.
Subscribers Only While almost every sci-fi epic has us navigating our way around the galaxy by voice command, the reality of controlling computers by voice has been a bit less impressive. It’s not that it can’t be done, it’s that there are inevitably errors. When your iPhone turns “Call Bonnie Smith Home” into “Calling Ronnie Schmidt Home” before you stamp the “end call” button, that’s not such a big deal. Having your GPS misunderstand where you want to go would be something else entirely.
ReKrete Floor Cleaner: Lose the Oily Mess
Subscribers Only Hangar floors exist at two ends of the same spectrum: the sublime dream of shiny gray epoxy under a bright fluorescent glare or the dingy reality of unloved, ashless-dispersant-stained concrete. Turning the latter into the former can be done, albeit at great expense and effort. But there might be something in between, thanks to a new product called ReKrete, a waterless cleaner designed to eliminate oil staining from concrete floors. At $30 for a 10-pound tub, it’s a lot cheaper than $250 worth of epoxy. But does it work?
Redbird’s Bold Move: Sim-Centric GA Training
For about $80,000, the FMX model offers motion, wrap-around visuals and a panel that can reconfigure from a glass cockpit to steam gauges in minutes.
Subscribers Only In 2007, Redbird Flight Simulations had a prototype flight simulator that basically consisted of Microsoft Flight Simulator on several screens and a moving cockpit enclosure. We flew it for two minutes before it broke. Things have improved since then. Today the company ships better than one a simulator a day, if you count both their tabletop version and full-motion enclosures. Most are reconfigurable, GA sims, but they also build custom simulators for specific aircraft such as the King Air C90. With over 430 units in the field now (223 full-motion), Redbird is the largest simulator company in the world in terms of devices sold.
Cirrus Examined: Just Average for Safety
Subscribers Only When Cirrus kicked open the barroom doors in 1999 with an innovative new airplane equipped with a parachute, it promised to turn the page on light aircraft safety. In our initial report on the Cirrus SR20, we deemed it “one of the most crashworthy airplanes in GA history.” A dozen years hence, does the accident history support the expectations? Has Cirrus delivered what many buyers hoped it would? And while we’re at it, how does it compare to other models? Which have the best accident rates, which the worst?
Letters: January 2012
Subscribers Only I read your article on navcomms in the December 2011 issue with interest. However, I think there is a bit of a slant toward the all-in-one avionics box with your magazine and I don’t really agree with it. While I admit that glass is wonderful to replace the attitude and heading indicators (electronic HSIs are even better), I’m not a big fan of GPS-only navigation data. GPS can be jammed, even if it hasn’t happened yet. There is no backup to GPS if the system goes down.
First Word: January 2012
Subscribers Only When Alan Klapmeier was in his stride at Cirrus five years ago, he liked to say that one thing he hoped to accomplish at Cirrus was to prove that you don’t need special DNA to fly an airplane. That’s probably true as far as it goes, but the other shoe to be dropped is this: You might need some special DNA to survive flying an airplane. That’s one of several conclusions I came to after poring over more than 500 accident reports for this month’s article on SR20 and SR22 safety. With its 26G seats, crashworthy cabin space and especially the CAPS BRS parachute, Cirrus didn’t necessarily promise the SR20/22 would be one the safest airplanes ever.