Accessories

If anyone in the nascent e-flight business was surprised by this development, they were polite enough not to say so. The real electric airplane market remains a village cottage industry and I learned at Aero in April that the village is very busy indeed. The overarching picture is this: The certification rules are in place, or soon will be, to certify electric aircraft, battery capacity is improving glacially and two companies-Bye Aerospace and Slovenia-based Pipistrel-are set to deliver airplanes in commercial volume. Actually, Pipistrel already has, with about 60 Alpha Electro trainers in the field around the world. But lacking regulatory imprimatur, these have been more technology demonstrators than practical, useful airplanes.

But with a production run that spans over 10 years, the Evolution line has needed a boost in modern tech. That’s just what the company did with the latest 1000/500 MAX series, fitting faster processors, better screens and a plug-and-play upgrade program that lets existing Evolution owners get in on the new features without buying a complete system. We recently flew with the new MAX displays installed in Aspen’s Cirrus and prepared this field report on the new features.

Garmin’s integrated cockpit retrofit program for turbines started with the G1000 for King Airs. That program commenced over ten years ago and according to Garmin’s Dave Brown, the company sells as many today as it did early in the project. To date there are over 600 G1000-converted King Airs in the field. It’s a complete transformation that now includes Garmin’s latest G1000 NXi with the GFC700 integrated autopilot, the latest weather radar, ADS-B and a variety of other functions that modernize even the oldest King Air.

Other athletic pilots agree that it sure would be convenient if there was one device that did it all, and since we covered pulse oximeters in the September 2017 issue of Aviation Consumer, Garmin released the D2 Delta PX aviator watch. It has an integrated pulse oximeter and a variety of other biometrics capabilities. I’ve been using it for close to a year and found that while it’s not the perfect solution, it comes close, with limitations.

Available in the app’s latest version 11 release, the new utility is standard in the Performance Plus and Business Performance subscription plans.

As you might surmise, there is a lot of opinion out there on that subject. You seem to be implying in your article that VGs would be a preferred choice over a STOL kit, but you didn’t actually say that. From your experience, if you were in my shoes, and money wasn’t the single most important consideration, how would you proceed and why? You would certainly make my day if you can answer this question.

A quarter century later, it’s fair to ask: Well, was it? The easy answer is yes, it was and is. But with a host of safety features such as crashworthy seats, energy absorbing structure, cabin flail space and the first-ever certificated airplane ballistic recovery parachute, Cirrus also implied that its new airplane would be safer, without actually saying the safest ever. So, how about that? Has it delivered on those claims? Answering that is not as simple as crunching the GAMA numbers to enumerate Cirrus’ inarguable dominant market share. But with a quarter century of accident data to review, it’s reasonable to take a stab at it.

The fallback, of course, is repairing/overhauling old instruments that may be left over from the Reagan era. This may or may not make sense, depending on the supportability, reliability and bottom-line cost for the work. In this article we’ll look at the market for instrument repairs and exchanges, while offering tips for deciding whether an EFIS upgrade is the better decision.

You bought something and now it doesn’t work. What recourse do you have? Can you compel the seller to exchange the bad something for a new one? If you return it, are you entitled to a refund of the full purchase price? Will the seller pay the full cost of getting it fixed? What if the something is three months old? A year? Five years? How long is the seller obligated to repair a defective product, exchange it or take it back and refund your money?

For example, the article referred to ADS-B ground stations as ADS-R stations, but they are not. The general term is Ground Based Transceiver (GBT). ADS-R is only one function of the GBT in which the GBT receives an ADS-B transmission on one data link frequency (978 or 1090 MHz) and rebroadcasts that transmission on the other frequency. This rebroadcast function only occurs if a client aircraft (ADS-B Out and In equipped) indicates in its transmission that it can receive only one frequency, and if the target aircraft is broadcasting ADS-B Out on the other frequency. Plus, both aircraft must be within a defined proximity (generally 15 NM horizontally and 3500 feet vertically) of each other.

The FAA calls them view-limiting devices, or VLDs, but we call them hoods. The concept is simple: In visual conditions simulate instrument conditions by restricting the pilot’s view to only the instrument panel and nothing outside. Who among us, however, hasn’t had “the hood” on and still snuck a peak outside? So, no matter how much it restricts your vision to the sides, you can always turn your head just that little bit and get a fleeting glimpse of the visual world beyond the instrument panel.

This economy of scale has put upward pressure on volume, downward pressure on pricing and competitive pressure to improve LED efficiency and longevity. In new aircraft, LED landing lights are all but standard, as are LED position and and strobe lights. The aftermarket remains a mixed bag. A survey of any ramp will find a smattering of LEDs, but a bunch of old GE 4509s. That the retrofit market is small is indicated by the small number of players-about six. As we went to press in February, that dropped by one when Whelen announced that it acquired LoPresti Aviation’s entire line, including the recently formed Illumivation for LED products. The new combined entity is called Whelen Aerospace Technologies. Most of these companies have some tilt toward large commercial and military applications because, well, that’s where the profit is.