Industry News

Its not much of a reach to posit that the entire survival of piston general aviation pivots around the exhaust valve, a $100 part that lives a miserable existence being slammed against a hardened steel seat 10 times a second swirled in a gale of white hot combustion gas. When an engine tanks prematurely or needs a midstream top overhaul, its often something to do with exhaust valves-bad guides, leaky seats, cracks around plug bosses originating near the exhaust valve.The engine makers and airframers have tried to meet these problems head on with mixed success.

I have just read your excellent reports on cylinders in the last two issues. Great timing, as we had our plane, a Cessna 210 with an IO-520, in the shop for an annual. We had to replace a jug, the fourth one since this factory-new engine was installed in 2001 and now has approximately 1000 hours.

Ever the innovator, Alan Klapmeiers latest brainstorm is to equip the multi-function displays in the Cirrus aircraft with a series of judgment-oriented checklist pages that more or less hector the pilot into pausing just for a moment before committing aviation. Such a thing might, for example, raise a sliver of doubt for the pilot about to depart off a 1500-foot ice-coated runway with a 37-knot crosswind into moderate freezing rain.

A comment on the article, “Aviation Credit Cards: Compare the Fine Print,” by Chad Trautvetter, in the January Aviation Consumer. The FBO where I am based, and perhaps others, requires tiedown/hangar customers to keep an Exxon Airworld card on file against which fuel, tiedown and other charges are made.

Sometimes, when I head to the airport to go flying, Im reminded of the B.B. King blues standard, The Thrill is Gone. Its not that I don’t enjoy flying airplanes, having done it now for about 35 years. Im not really bored with slipping the surly bonds. But increasingly, I find myself annoyed at the hassle factor and this relates to the pace of modern life.

It may seem utter apostasy or even a fairy tale, but there once was a time when engine cylinders and crankshafts werent considered snake-bit parts. You could reasonably expect them to make to advertised TBO and beyond.

If you fly for fun or for a living and you have shopped for life insurance, you probably heard the agent draw a breath when he learned you were a pilot. If you fly, you pay more for life insurance. A lot more. My own experience in buying life insurance is typical. After asking my age, weight, whether I smoked and a number of other health-related questions, the agent quoted me the companys most attractive rates, with all the appropriate disclaimers.

Good column on the recent Cirrus publicity (see December 2006 First Word) and I agree with you, especially the point that the accident record has to do with the pilots, not the airplane. The inevitable result of Cirrus successful strategy to market the airplane to new pilots is the fact that there are now lots of low-time pilots flying complicated aircraft, many on long cross-country missions.

After you look at it for awhile and not a very long while at that the thing thats most noticeable about the HondaJet isn’t that the engines are mounted on those weird stalks on top of the wing, but rather that you don’t really notice that the engines are mounted on weird stalks on top of the wing.

Buying fuel for your airplane? Then don’t forget your credit card, especially given current fuel prices, which have climbed sharply over the past year or so. Two recent headlines show just how intertwined credit cards and aviation fuel purchases really are.

On the safety front, Cirrus Design must sometimes feel like it takes three steps forward and two back. In early October, when New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidles SR20 punched a hole in a Manhattan apartment building, the company got a thorough wash-and-rinse in the news cycle before being nudged off the front page by more sensational news.

From a distance, N73FR looks like any other 20-something-year-old Skyhawk. Upon closer inspection, the differences loom large. Whats a constant-speed, three-blade prop doing on a 172?