Its axiomatic that four-place airplanes are flown with two or three seats empty for most trips. But its just as true that some owners want not just four seats, but a bunch of payload even beyond that. Thats why we have the Cessna 182 and the Piper PA-28-235/236 series. That there arent many of the latter suggests that owners hungry for hauling are a fraction of the market, at least for Piper.
To date, even the lowest-priced mandate-compliant ADS-B Out solutions require opening the airframe for a major installation. Whether installing a remote ADS-B transmitter or a new transponder, its realistic to plan on nearly two days of shop time. In round numbers, that could mean a $1600 invoice-just for labor. But not with the uAvionix skyBeacon, a bolt-on, two-wire solution.
The logical alternative to circumaural (over the ear) and supra-aural (on top of the ear) headsets is an in-ear design. These are basically ear buds attached to a thin head frame that also accommodates a traditional microphone. Their purpose is obvious and simple, which is to allow more freedom and comfort than you might experience wearing a traditional headset.
Its routine: We get in, strap in without thinking about it and beginning running the checklist. Putting on and tightening up the restraint system is probably the most basic of automatic tasks any of us do as pilots-without the reassuring pressure of the belt and shoulder harness attaching our torso to the airplane, most of us wouldnt hit the starter.
If point-of-view or action cams are as common as iPads in the modern cockpit, buyers may be getting a little bored with the ordinary flat footage they produce. Enter the 360 camera, a gadget that literally has eyes in the back of its head. The 360 market hasnt exactly exploded, but there are a half dozen to pick from, with more on the way.
Someone just flipped the switch and shut off summer. Aircraft owners who live in the temperate climes are preparing their machines for the demands of winter. Unless those owners have been living under a rock, they know that part of that preparation involves figuring out a way to start the engine when the frost is on the pumpkin because they know that firing it up in very cold weather, without some form of preheat, can do a lot of damage to the engine.
No matter how you feel about Garmins market domination, you cant argue that the company maintains the poll position by enthusiastically pumping out a steady stream of fresh products almost on a monthly basis. But Garmin also knows how to get the most mileage from its major systems and the G600/500 retrofit PFD/MFD was getting stale.
My guess is that many pilots like me are over 40 years of age (Im 62) and may not be completely familiar with newer wireless Bluetooth technology and its limitations. After a radio failure on a recent flight, I tried to pair my newer Bose A20 Bluetooth headset with my new Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone I bought to replace my aging iPhone 4, which would connect to my A20. The local ATC tower has a recorded phone line where they can issue control instructions in a pinch.
It wasnt long ago that subscription-based satellite broadcast weather systems lost traction in a market flooded with ADS-B weather receivers. WSI is canceling its InFlight data service at the end of this year and Avidyne discontinued the MLB700 Sirius weather receiver. This leaves Garmin as the dominant supplier of SiriusXM (SXM) weather receivers.
Garmin is trying to get as much mileage as it can from its watches by trickling models down into the aviation division and the D2 Charlie is a derivative of the successful Fenix 5 multisport watch series. The Charlie improves features we always thought could be better in the old pilot watch, which include more useful map graphics. There’s still no touchscreen.
If Beech Bonanza ownership seems out of the budget, the good news is that there are plenty of vintage V-tail models on the market at affordable prices. The bad news is that unless those 50- and 60-year-old airframes have been we’ll maintained, you could be buying a money pit. Plus, shops wont feel sorry for you when you roll up in any Bonanza.
Its easy to see why. Although it has expanded with off-site annexes, the basic footprint of the Cirrus factory hasnt changed appreciably since the first airplanes were delivered in 1999. But it has undergone substantial reorganizations and yet another was underway when we visited Duluth in August 2017.
