Aircraft Stepups

These things don’t last forever. The baking 200-degree temperatures on top of a glareshield mean you’ll likely be faced with a repair or replacement. Generally, the main part that fails (ultimately leaking) is the rear rubber expansion/contraction diaphragm. Since the fluid in the compass needs room to expand and contract with temperature changes, a sealing membrane keeps the fluid inside. These simple devices arent packed with components. Typically, it takes just four small screws to expose the diaphragm on the rear compass housing.

Among the minimum equipment required for VFR and IFR flying, FAR 91.205 still lists the magnetic direction indicator as a must-have item. Dont confuse this with the gyroscopic (or equivalent) directional indicator. Thats required for IFR, in addition to a compass. Given the primitive nature of a magnetic compass, owners are often shocked at the impressive invoices it can generate when it fails. And compasses do fail. Ever have one that leaked its fluid down the front of the instrument panel?

If its every pilots sacred duty to upload aviation videos to YouTube to offset a criminal surplus of cat coverage, Garmin and GoPro are ready to deal. Just as we go to press this month, both companies have introduced new action cameras suitable for in-cockpit shooting and outside shots of aircraft in flight. The good news? Usability is up and prices are down and the accessory market is soon to go into frenzied overdrive on the off chance that you cant find just the right gadget for the shot you want.

While experience has taught us that there’s no free lunch in aviation, especially when speed is involved, we wanted to know if there were any ways to make our airplanes faster without having to spend cubic bucks. We surveyed the speed mod market-its vast-and found that while there are some high-dollar mods out there, it may be possible to up the cruise speed and climb rate of your airplane by 5 to 10 percent without going broke. Heres what we found.

For those who worry about the legalities, the FAA has recently relaxed restrictions on semi-permanent cockpit mounts for tablets, even products that require a sizable panel hole, wiring or plumbing for cooling. These are generally considered minor modifications and although they require logbook entries, they may not require further documentation.

Well say it up front-in the great scheme of things, your risk of getting hurt or killed in an aircraft accident due to carbon monoxide poisoning is on the low end of the spectrum. From what we can tell, its a little below that of having a midair collision. Nevertheless, its not zero, our airplanes are aging and maintenance isn’t perfect, so if you fly in an area where you use your heater during at least half the year, we think its wise to have a detector in the airplane that will alert you to even very low levels of CO.

The chore of rigging the flight controls-which includes, among other things, adjusting control cable tensions-is a maintenance item thats often neglected by owners and mechanics alike. After all, what could possibly change if the airplane has not changed? But change it does. Parts wear out and clearances change, cables stretch, brackets warp and maintenance of seemingly unrelated systems can lead to unforeseen rigging mayhem. At a minimum, improper rigging means lost airspeed. At worst, it can mean a lost airplane. In this article, we’ll look at the symptoms and describe a do-it-yourself process for checking the rigging on your own. The legwork could save you some shop labor.

One of the major announcements from AirVenture 2016 was ForeFlights version 8. At least it was major in the eyes of the company. ForeFlight CEO Tyson Weihs told us it might be our biggest release since 2011. That year marked ForeFlights first release designed specifically for the iPad, which one could argue changed GA cockpit information forever. ForeFlight 8 didnt actually release until late August, but weve logged time with a preview version since this summer and only half agree with Weihs. The new version lays the groundwork for huge changes. However, we doubt the day-to-day use of the app will change for most pilots. Not yet anyway. Check out the sidebar on page 19 for more on that. For whats actually new in the app, read on.

The problem Ive always had with the Hawk glasses is styling-you wont win any modeling contracts with these utilitarian frames. This might not matter for action sports and flying missions, but they don’t exactly complement business attire. The companys new ComfortStyle line changes all that. After a $75 trip to my optometrist for some measurements, I sent the Hawks back to Cedar Park, Texas-based Flying Eyes to be fitted with my prescription. The lenses are made by Shamir Optical Industry and fabricated through Digital Eye Lab. My order was turned in less than one week.

This year at AirVenture, Quiet Technologies caught my attention, so I got a demo of its $359 Halo in-ear model and bought one. Initially, the headset offered a good fit and promised to be quiet. When I started the engine, I immediately noticed low-frequency noise that isn’t present in my Lightspeed. I reserved judgement until two hours in cruise flight at 11,000 feet.

The M600 uses the fuselage-with beef ups-and a higher-power version of the engine from the M500. The M600 also has a new wing-marketing claims its a clean-sheet design-that carries 90 gallons more fuel than the Meridian, allowing the M600 50 percent more range, a 958-pound higher gross weight and 100 more pounds in the cabin with full fuel. The M600 is also Pipers first airplane to use the sophisticated Garmin G3000 avionics suite.

Need a cool 25 grand to pull the trigger on a retrofit? The claim: simply fill out an online application, get quick approval and the shop automatically gets paid and started on your dream panel. But is it really that easy? How does an avionics loan differ from traditional aircraft financing? And what ever happened to those government-backed private equity loans that were supposed to help fund a big majority of ADS-B upgrades? To answer those questions, we did some digging. Heres what we learned.