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.
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.
At nearly every airport you’ll find aircraft that havent flown in years. Some are hidden in private hangars, some are stashed in the corners of maintenance shop hangars and some are ramp derelicts that are begging for rescue from the harsh elements. Is it worth getting involved with these neglected birds given the number of airworthy ones on the current market? The short answer is maybe, but only with the right approach and a healthy dose of realism. Hint: Seldom is there a great deal.
Its long been recognized that an effective way of staring a fight in a bar catering to pilots is to innocently ask about procedures for hot starting big-bore Lycoming or Continental engines and then step back. The chairs will start flying. Thats about what happened when we started the research for this piece. We heard it all. Being either foolish or fearless, we immersed ourselves in the subject to see if we could come up with information as to why hot starting is a problem, find recommendations for maintenance and operating technique that can minimize the problem and see if there are aftermarket devices that can help. We did, we did and there are.
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.
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.
Acompany called AeroEngine Protection Corp. has been aggressively marketing a range of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance programs for piston engines. While the concept is new in the piston aircraft market, similar programs have been the norm in the jet aircraft world for years, and aircraft OEMs, used aircraft dealers, engine overhaulers and fleet operators are signing on with AEPCs programs for pistons in impressive numbers. Aircraft Bluebook has even recognized the program when publishing typical resale costs.
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.
The most basic stepping stones to be traversed by a student pilot going after a certificate involve figuring out where she or he wants the airplane to go and learning the monkey motion involved in causing it to go there. Weve gotten all sophisticated over the years and refer to that sort of thing as flight maneuvering tasks. Nevertheless, the process of
