Industry News

We sometimes think the entire edifice of new aircraft engine development is like a beachfront house built a little close to the surf. The view is great for awhile, then the tide rises and foundation crumbles. That analogy works for Thielert AG, whose stunning initial success with aerodiesel engines has devolved into insolvency and an investigation into potentially fraudulent financial reporting on the companys fiscal health. The owners of some 600 diesel-powered Diamond aircraft are less worried about the financial niceties than they are this overarching question: Is the engine itself technically and economically viable or is it just too maintenance hungry to survive in the market? And if so, is that what dragged Thielert into this mess? Based on our interviews with owners, sales people and Diamond officials, our conclusion is that this may be unknowable at the moment. As we go to press this month, Diamonds senior management is huddling in Europe with Thielerts new management and insolvency overseers to bring clarity to this situation. It may be weeks before we learn anything useful, if we ever do.

As the late Ronald Reagan once famously said, there you go again. This time its Parker Hannifins Airborne division shotgunning yet another a service letter to thousands of owners “requiring” them to remove Airborne dry vacuum pumps. My use of quotes around the word require is purposeful. Although Parker Hannifin has zero legal authority to require owners to do anything, the tone of the letter is clearly meant to frighten owners into complying with the companys demand. Ive received a couple of calls querying about this from owners obviously alarmed-or annoyed-by it. Several years ago, Parker tried a similar tactic by sending a letter explaining that aircraft equipped with dry vacuum pumps were “required” to have a backup vacuum source before flying in IMC when, of course, no such requirement exists.

I found your article on affordable panel upgrades a realistic and refreshing alternative to the “We Fly The Latest Glass!” articles appearing monthly in the aviation glossies. For unfortunate souls whose budget for goodies has been depleted by the price of avgas, your functional and affordable GPS options for IFR operations make a lot of sense. I fly a light twin with a variant on your Option 1: a panel mount IFR-certified GPS (Apollo GX 50) complemented by a panel-mounted Flight Cheetah 210-a bigger screen cousin of the Garmin 496. With this arrangement, I handle frequent hard IFR with confidence, weather smarts and situational awareness that I couldnt even imagine while earning my instrument rating an avionics generation ago in an aircraft with nothing more than two VORs and an ADF.

My wife informs me that, right on schedule, I have become my father, having entered the rail-at-the-idiots-on-television phase of middle age. And there is so much to rail at. Specifically, two reports that ran nearly back to back last month. One quoted a middle-aged woman angry that she had to pay $100 to fill up her Lincoln Navigator. (My rail: “And you bought that car why?) The second report was a roundtable of talking heads bemoaning the fact that George Bush couldnt convince the Saudis to increase oil production to stave off $4 gas. (My rail: “Did it ever occur to you morons to drive something that would allow you to barely notice $4 gas?”)

The long-awaited age of the VLJ has begun. The Eclipse 500 and the Cessna 510 Mustang are the vanguard of the new movement. Eclipse is now building almost one new jet airplane each work day. Cessna delivered 45 airplanes in 2007 and is ramping up to build two Mustangs a week. There are already close to 200 VLJs out there. By this time next year that number will have more than doubled, and soon other manufacturers will be swelling the ranks of Jet-A consumers. One of the looming worries for VLJ builders and potential owner-pilots is what the cost of insuring these jets will be, or if it will be available at all for budding jet pilots.

Give pilots and aircraft owners credit for one thing: It takes a strong constitution to remain functional and focused when the avgas truck creaks to a halt and you realize that what you thought was a 5 on the price placard at 100 yards was actually a 6. So you whimper softly and pay the man, perhaps salving yourself with the idea that the new Jet-A burning airplanes will make this nightmare go away. But will they really? Are diesels that much more efficient than gasoline engines? Yes, possibly. But it depends on the engines being compared. When it comes to efficiency, Lycoming and Continental are not created equal. But the larger issue-and whats driving the Jet A piston revolution-is that Jet A-burning pilots (piston or turbine) neednt get their pants snagged worrying about their fuel being phased out in 10 years. They can also count on it being available in every country on the planet and at ever more airports. And thats why we write stories about Jet A piston engines, not because theyre cheaper to operate-they can be-and not because theyre more efficient-they are, but not as much as you might think.

When I was researching the purchase of an airplane a few years ago, I was immediately drawn to the prospect of an airplane with FADEC. The benefits seem so obvious to anyone who has observed the advances in automotive technology over the past three decades. With the Continental IOF-240B in my Liberty XL2, I achieve truly modern powerplant management. Advantages, some of which you covered in your article, include single-lever power control, automatic mixture and spark timing, perfectly calibrated fuel injection and storage of thousands of hours of data on a memory card, which is then easy to analyze. I picked up my XL2 about 1 1/2 years ago and now have we’ll over 300 hours on the Hobbs. TCM has stood solidly behind the product and Steve Smith of Aerosance has personally visited with me to iron out some early difficulties. TCM has changed the FADEC boxes twice-we are now on the third iteration of the software and I couldnt be happier.

If youre a true believer in the VLJ revolution, your world got rocked in early February with the announcement that Adam Aircraft, a promising and early contender in the market, folded up. From the warm comfort of hindsight, Id like to say we told you so, but no such claim will be forthcoming. As much as its possible to predict these things, we thought Adams business plan was realistic, its funding relatively assured and the aircraft-the 500 piston twin and the 700 twin jet-were good designs well-suited for the market. True, the piston twin market is iffy, but VLJ demand is supposed to be the great fertile ground of the 21st century.

When famed researcher-and inventor of the electric starter motor-Charles Kettering discovered that no compound worked as we’ll as tetraethyl lead to kick up the octane of gasoline, he couldnt have guessed that nearly 100 years later, science would still be looking for something almost as good. That the search hasnt born fruit is one reason-although not the only one-that we still fly behind magnetos, not the electronic ignitions that have been commonplace in cars for three decades. Its not for lack of trying. Teledyne Continental has had a certified FADEC for piston engines for some eight years, homebuilders fly with various iterations of electronic ignitions and General Aviation Modifications intriguing PRISM system thus far exists only as a test article. And the tests confirm that these ignition systems can prevent detonation in high power engines burning lower octane unleaded aviation fuels. So whats the problem?

Im sure youre familiar with Joseph Juptners nine-volume U.S. Civil Aircraft series. Given all the aircraft that he lovingly writes about, you might wonder why he called the Luscombe the finest and most beautiful light aircraft ever made. He owned one. Paul Berge is my favorite-and certainly the wittiest-person writing about aviation today, or yesterday, or at any time perhaps. But the judge must recuse himself in cases such as this unless he has owned all of the aircraft judged.

Lately, good news in the world of general aviation has been scarce, but heres some: The aviation financial markets are so liquid as to have been left intact by the subprime lending crisis that has tanked the housing industry. Further, the aircraft loan business remains competitive enough to offer various loan products at reasonable interest rates. Nonetheless, the savvy buyer can make the loan process more painless by doing some prep work before picking up the phone or surfing the Web for money sources. As with a house purchase, both the buyer and the object of his financial affections must pass certain tests-not the least of which is a competent pre-buy on the airplane, having your financial house in order with the documents to prove it and knowing about any credit surprises before the bank finds them.

Surrendering your airplane to the shop for maintenance work requires a certain stoicism. You have to steel yourself to expect the worst and enjoy the relief when the news isn’t so bad after all. Then there’s the invoice, which is always higher than you figured. Sometimes a lot higher. Why is that? Cant a shop provide an accurate estimate and stick to it? Why must opening the invoice envelope be an agita-inducing moment? There’s no easy answer to this, other than to say thats the nature of airplane ownership-get used to it. But there’s a limit to how much over the estimate an invoice can or should go before something has to give-either the shop gives you a break or, better, you knew the invoice was spiraling upward before the envelope ever arrived.