Accessories

[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….

[IMGCAP(1)]Forget crashworthiness, durability, looks and adjustability, the average aircraft seat circa 1975 fails miserably on one count alone: Comfort.

Most were built with nylon webbing that sags with time or cheap foam thats long since lost its resilience. Upholstery shops sometimes deal with this merely by stitching fresh fabric over the old stuff or by replacing the underpinnings with more of the same, although some shops make an honest attempt at improving the seats underlying foundation.

One company thats kicked things up a notch is Oregon Aero, which has made a handy little business out of marketing the heck of an open-cell foam product know as conformal foam.

This stu…

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A failed flashlight bulb in the cockpit can be serious. Even if there’s a spare handy, changing it can be a challenge in the dark or in turbulence.

How about a flashlight with a bulb that never burns out, or at least not for tens of thousands of hours? How about a light with batteries that last days, not hours?

Were talking about flashlights that use LEDs (light emitting diodes) instead of conventional incandescent bulbs. Yes, these are the same LEDs weve seen in electronic equipment-cheap key ring lights and the like-for years. The problem has been that while LEDs came in an array of colors, they werent available in white, until recently, when a white LED was fin…

[IMGCAP(1)]Since we last examined aviation life rafts four years ago, new designs have been introduced and weve seen significant improvements made to existing products. Light aircraft owners have benefited from the Part 135 and big-iron GA market, which drives raft development, for better or worse.

We were sent evaluation rafts from Air Cruisers, BFGoodrich, Hoover and Winslow. Once again, Eastern Aero Marine (EAM) and Survival Products declined to participate and RFD didnt return our calls or e-mails. Survival Products later had an apparent change of heart and did provide rafts for testing.

Our testing protocol was simple but demanding. We enlisted a team of volunteers-ranging fro…

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Is there anybody alive who doesnt have a portable GPS moving map yet? Okay, so maybe youre a Ralph Kramden fan and youre waiting for the 3D model with accompanying decoder ring.

Garmin hasnt announced that model yet but we sometimes get the impression theyre about to. In the meantime, the company is finally shipping something that comes close: A portable moving map GPS with color that rivals Garmins GNS 430 panel mount.

At a glance, the GPSMAP 295 looks like an inflated version of the GPS III Pilot, another popular Garmin product. Like the Pilot, the 295s screen orientation is horizontal or landscape, the buttons are on the right and the antenna pokes up from…

[IMGCAP(1)]Now that the wireless world stands poised to equip every man, woman and child on the planet with a PDA-personal downtime annihilator- the era of the affordable airborne telephone has finally emerged.

After literally years of false starts and technical plot twists, AirCell, Inc. has gone from the are-you-guys-still-out-there phase to genuine hardware and service thats ready for purchase.

Although AirCells network is still only about half complete, the system provides good coverage at high altitudes east of the Mississippi and by years end, most of the service gaps will be filled. We recently flew the system with AirCells test pilot Keith Griffith in a Mooney, tried som…

[IMGCAP(1)]Worrying about how density altitude saps aircraft performance is a little like your mother reminding you to take your galoshes to school. Most of the time, it didnt matter but when you needed the boots, you really needed them.

Our guess is that most flat lander pilots don’t have to worry much about density altitude computations, either. Even in the heat and humidity of high summer, most of us operate off long enough runways or at light enough weights for denalt not to be a serious issue.

At higher weights or at mountain airports, the sanguine attitude wont wash. Every year, there are a handful of wrecks in which pilots ignore the effect of density altitude and assume the…

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With flight service stations as scarce as hens teeth and a computer on nearly every pilots desk, delivery of pre-flight weather information has been revolutionized over the past five years.

There’s lots of free online information out there, but there’s also a burgeoning industry in subscription weather service sites that purport to provide more and better data than you can otherwise get.

Are they worth it? Or is this just another rat-hole down which you can pour money better squirreled away for an overhaul reserve? We evaluated six pay-for-use pilot weather sites and our conclusion is that none of them are must-haves.

The Lay of the Land
Most of the p…

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In the world of GPS equipage, weve noticed an interesting trend lately. For want of a better term, we’ll call it the have and have-not syndrome.

The haves are buying up Garmin GNS 430s as fast as Garmin can make them while the have-nots are eyeing all the hand-me-down GPS boxes many of these owners are dumping to accommodate new gear.

Given the volume Garmin is enjoying with GNS 430, this is a somewhat unprecedented development in the recent history of avionics. Some of these GPS navigators were installed less than two years ago and although their owners consider them obsolete, the fact is, these units are serviceable, if somewhat poor in features compared to the newer…