Editorial

Owners of older Garmin GPS devices who live near our nations capital got a bit of a surprise recently: The ADIZ boundaries disappeared from their moving maps. While thats not exactly an aerial emergency (the D.C. ADIZ doesnt move around) it would come as a bit of a shock to someone who just launched on a VFR flight expecting to use the map to stay out of the F-16 zone. Whats more disturbing, though, is the “why” behind the disappearance. It seems the FAA, and subsequently Jeppesen, changed the way the ADIZ was coded in their master database.

In my continuing quest to assure a fatal overdose of information about avgas, Ive been doing wider reading on the oil and energy industries in general. Ive plowed through several volumes, but the most intriguing is The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy by Peter Huber and Mark Mills. Notwithstanding the ridiculous subtitle no doubt written by some publishing marketer trying to sex up a dense topic, the book challenges basic assumptions about energy and how we use it. Its theoretical stuff, but with reams of production data as factual underpinning.

Ive been doing some reading on the rapid evolution of digital and electric drive technology in the automotive segment and was not too surprised to learn that the typical cars build budget now allows more for integrated circuits than it does for steel. This evolution is accelerating to the point that it may not be many years before the traditional cam and valve train is replaced by digital actuators to manage the fuel/air charge. The implications for weight, performance and economy are obvious and significant.

It sure seems like it to me. Just in the past couple of months, I m seeing a scramble of activity, including major initiatives from both Continental and Lycoming, a new engine idea from South Africa, a new model from Cirrus pitched to burn low-octane fuel and a rising fish-or-cut-bait sense from aircraft owners and pilots.

I just got a call from a reader in New Jersey who sold his Baron-lucky guy-and wants to step down into an LSA to finish out his flying career. “When you get these things all tricked out with glass,” he said, “they cost $170,000.” That happens to be a significantly larger piece of change than he got for his Baron. Is this right? Or more to the point, do these kinds of prices make for a sustainable LSA industry with dozens of players? The short answer, I think, is no. Let me rephrase that: Prices like that wont sustain the large number of LSA manufacturers now in the market, but my view is that nothing will.

Maybe I emit some kind of weird electromagnetic field, but it seems if there’s a way to get a computer to crash, Ill find it. Back in my dot.com, tech-writer days people loved to have me beta test software because Id break it within five minutes. Ive even found bugs in MFDs weeks before certification.

True or false: You are required to have current charts in the aircraft with you. The answer is “false,” youre only required to have the right data. So that 2002-vintage sectional is fine so long as you know the CTAF for your destination was changed three years ago to 123.05. Howie Keefe built a business on this premise with his Air Chart Systems. These were spiral-bound books with the sectionals and en route charts for the entire lower 48. You got the book once and then subscribed to the updates-delivered via mail with stickers you could put in the chart atlases as needed. This system was far cheaper than buying all those charts every time they were revised, and it was far more convenient to use if you regularly traversed wide swaths of the U.S.

As a child, I was not we’ll behaved. In fact, I was an excruciating pain in the ass to my parents, my teachers and all my little friends. (Stick with me, you’ll see where this is going.) When my mother died some years ago, all of this came rushing back when, much to my surprise, I discovered that she had saved all my report cards.

Those of you keeping score at home might have noticed this is the second sequential issue with a Garmin product in the lead story slot. We generally don’t like to do that, but Garmins new aera line of portables was the big news that needed to come first. I, half jokingly, said to Editor Paul Bertorelli that we were going to start getting letters addressed to The Garmin Consumer. He, only half-jokingly, quipped back, “Yeah, but theyre the only ones innovating.” That statement is both true and false, and quite telling in both ways. Garmins aera isn’t even the second touchscreen portable GPS on the scene. Its more like the fourth, behind Anywhere Maps ATC, and Honeywells AV8TOR and AV8TOR Ace. And if you count Tablet-PC solutions for cockpit GPS navigators, the aera just entered a crowded room.

Anyone who makes anything in the aviation business-maybe thats everyone, actually-complains about FAA oversight and regulation. Most of these complaints don’t question the need for regulation, just its execution-FAA foot dragging, ridiculous paper shuffling and inconsistent standards from one office to the next. I have, at times, adopted a more radical view that would allow the free market to regulate general aviation entirely, with little or no FAA intervention. I will be the first to concede that my enthusiasm for Adam Smiths invisible hand has been somewhat diminished by the fact that my retirement savings have declined by 30 percent, thanks to a lack of adult supervision in the banking industry. But I digress in a way which could lead to bitterness and recrimination and, well, who needs that?

People who fly tend to be a bit cultish. We can remain devoted to products we love for the one redeeming value while tolerating the abuse of 100 failings. Were fans. Thats a plus if youre talking new technology. When the real-world operating experience of the Thielert-powered DA42 turned nightmarish, there was outcry and backlash-but there were still devotees. Granted, outside avgas enclaves like the U.S., customers will put up with quite a bit to burn diesel. For some its go diesel or go bankrupt, sooner or later.Diamond Aircraft is now staking a hefty piece of the bank that they can win back and gain fans by reinventing the aerodiesel on their own as the Austro. The Austro is not a shined-up Thielert (now Centurion) engine. Its built on the same bones, but its construction is beefier. Aviaton Consumers editor, Paul Bertorelli spent some time poking around that engine at the Diamond factory in London, Ontario. His impression is that that Austro believes that Thielert modified the original Mercedes block, head and injection system in ways that reduced durability. Modern, over-the-road diesel engines have head bolts as big as your fist a for a reason. Diesels pound the hell out of themselves and everything theyre attached to. Heavy structure isn’t an option you can skimp on.

Returning home after covering AirVenture in Oshkosh is a little like being released from the intensive care unit. I know why I was there and Im glad I was, but sometimes Im not so sure I want to go back. Thats not a comment on the show itself, but on the intensity of covering it in a world that has become accustomed to a digital river of information which we struggle to fill. These days, there’s not much time to ruminate on the meaning of it all.