Accessories

Speed brakes, also called spoilers, have been sighted on everything from C-172s to Dukes and Cessna 421s. To a certain extent, theyve become a status symbol.

Yet, on some airplanes, you have to ask: When the heck would you ever use them? And on others, you might wonder why the factory didnt think of adding them in the first place. (Actually, brakes are a factory standard accessory or option on a number of new aircraft, including Mooneys, Bonanzas and the new Lancair Columbia.)

Thats all we’ll and good for buyers of new airplanes. But what about the meat-and-potatoes of the gadget and accessory market, the retrofits? Are brakes a must-have item or just oneof those things to soak…

Been to a camping store lately? Dont go. Or if you do, stay away from the gadget case containing the handheld GPS navigators that are even more popular with hikers than they are with pilots. The prices will only depress you.

The so-called sport and terrestrial portables look astonishingly like aviation units but they cost half or even a quarter as much. There’s a reason for that and we’ll get to it later.

Meanwhile, you may think that with Garmin shipping boxcar loads of 195s, every pilot in the known universe already owns a portable GPS. In fact, some buyers are still shopping. A recent survey by our sister publication, IFR, revealed that only 61 percent of readers said they had a…

Digital watches have been around since the 1970s, along with digital calculators and even a smattering of digital indicators in cars.

And even though the digital revolution has swept the GA cockpit, steam-driven gauges persist, notably tachometers and manifold pressure gauges. Of the two, the tach lends itself most readily to a digital display.

The tachometer is the primary means of engine control, at least for airplanes with fixed pitch props. Shouldnt it be the most precise and easiest to read? The answer is yes and three companies have digital tachometer offerings that are a cut above that old junker tach that needs periodic replacement or repair.

Horizon Instruments has a…

Perennial aviation argument that generates equal amounts of heat and light: Should you use a checklist or not?

We don’t have a dog in that fight and we claim no moral high ground on whether to use the thing as a double check for tasks done by memory, as a pre-action Gospel According to Piper or a fly swatter, for that matter. Its your airplane.

That said, there are number of commercially prepared checklists on the market and herewith is a survey.

The point of departure is whether any of these products improves on what you can make for yourself by introducing your POH to a copy machine and applying some laminate from the office supply house.

Avtech
Pilot Products…

Datalink this, datalink that, hardware, software, service providers, subscriptions, bit charges, message costs. Holy cow, is this beginning to sound sort of familiar?

Datalink is a generic term that has come to represent text and data services delivered into the cockpit. If you think of it as Internet in the sky, youve got the concept.

For a potential buyer, there are three distinct issues involved; the services provided, the link medium and the airborne hardware. Right now, the industry is in its infancy, funded by various groups with differing agendas, not the least of which is the government.

In other words, none of this stuff is resolved to the extent that you can make re…

Last summers EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh saw the introduction of a number of advanced, third- and fourth-generation ANR headsets.

The Bose Aviation Headset X created quite a stir, being a radical lightweight design purported to perform better than the market-leading Series II.

LightSPEED introduced its 25K, primarily a technological upgrade on the 20K, with expectations that it would equal Bose in performance.

DRE Communications introduced the 6000enr, a conventional-looking David Clark-type design. And last, Peltor rolled out the Model 1750 Stratosphere, returning to the ANR market after a long absence.

Vaporware?
In whats fast becoming an annoying habit amon…

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During those first few hours of flight training, when it was still iffy whether youd be better off to forget flying and buy golf clubs, you probably got some gruff advice on logbooks. From an FBO counter selection of exactly one, your CFI probably grunted, Here, buy this.

Each page completed and carefully totaled thereafter was its own little milestone and its great fun to flip back through those pages, no matter how far down the airway youve traveled since.

Paper logbooks arent treasured, however, when youre filling out the application for the private or instrument checkride and you just cant get the subcategories to add up to the totals. The odd misplaced dec…

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As pilots, we all want to decrease risks. In some cases, that can be done by buying sophisticated equipment, such as a sferics device, radar or improved seatbelts.

Until very recently, gadgets to reduce the risk of a midair collision have been out of reach for most aircraft owners, primarily due to cost. The typical airline TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) costs from $50,000 up to more than three times that, making it a top-heavy investment for light aircraft owners.

The low-cost alternative-the Ryan TCAD-helps. But until recently, it lacked one very critical bit of information: azimuth. With a TCAD, you can tell when traffic is out there and how high it is r…

[IMGCAP(1)]Although GPS systems are the glamour boxes of the avionics world, in some ways, the most impressive advances have been made in the mundane field of audio panels.

As we reported in the July 1999 issue, new audio panels from Garmin and PS Engineering have advanced the state of cockpit sound far beyond the simple switching networks common a decade ago. But all the money in the world spent on an audio panel isn’t worth squat without a good pair of headsets.

Many pilots continue to shortchange themselves by plugging an ancient David Clark or an el-cheapo passive headset into a multi-thousand dollar audio network. It makes no sense.

Thats one reason active noise canceling…

[IMGCAP(1)]Pilots may be pre-disposed towards gadgets but we have to believe that when the cabin door is secured, many of us wish to shut out at least some of lifes annoyances, a crabby boss, perhaps or those pesky swings in the NASDAQ. Or maybe the fact that three hours on the phone with technical support didnt fix the ^%$#@#!* bug that keeps locking up that great software from Redmond. (Yeah, we know, the best is yet to come.)

Against that backdrop, do we really want to let Windows-based navigators into the cockpit or stick with the tried-and-true (and expensive) genuine airplane-approved hardware from Olathe and other avionics garden spots? A small company called Control Vision is…

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For the typical presbyopic middle-aged pilot, night flying can sometimes be as much fun as a root canal. Its not so much the flying or squinting at the eye-test type on an approach plate but avoiding disaster on the taxi to and from the runway.

Even landing at night is hardly an ordeal for most of us, at least on a well-lighted runway. Once off the runway, however, good luck finding and following the faded yellow lines, especially if you have a nose-mounted landing light burning dimly behind an age-yellowed plastic lens smeared with dirt.

Youd think, then, that the world cries out for a better class of landing light and youre probably right. But does it have to cost $…

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Most pilots generally assume that switching on the landing light during daylight operations radically improves the chances of avoiding a midair collision, especially in a busy pattern.

While this may not always be true, logically, a bright landing light will improve your chances to be seen, especially when youre head-on to any traffic that you might or might not see. If a bright light is good, is a flashing bright light better? Again, probably so, or at least so claims Precise Flight, manufacturer of the Pulselite landing light flasher system.

The Pulselite has been on the market for a number of years and has a reputation for being a well-made, easy-to-install device….