A Hangar of Your Own
If you cant find a rental, building or buying a hangar might be an option. But a good investment? Dont count on it.
Misc
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Pad, Plug or Flamethrower?
Cylinder heat and a sump pad is the best winter pre-heat option but a pad alone is all you’ll need in mild climates.
Letters 12/00
Personal Jet Feedback
I find your Aviation Consumer always interesting and informative. I must share with you an observation concerning your recent article on the Eclipse and Safire projects.
Color me skeptical, but if you use the estimated investment figures from your article of $300 million and the 1000 aircraft delivery schedule over four to six years in the interview with Vern Raburn (thats four airplanes per week, average, over five years), the cost per aircraft of the interest (or return on capital)is 12 percent.
Thats pretty conservative, given the risk profile of the investment. This equates to a cost of $180,000 per aircraft. Thats nearly a quarter of t…
Letters 02/01
Aviation Labs Is Tops
Regarding your article in the December issue on labs that perform oil analysis, I thought I’d pass this along. For several hundred hours I have been finding aluminum flakes in my oil filter and suction screen. Oil filter elements were sent to three of the labs mentioned in your article.
I even sent samples to Light Plane Maintenance, your sister publication. Two of the three labs and LPM diagnosed it as aluminum, probably from the piston pin plugs.
Both recommended flying the airplane another 25 hours, resampling, and borescoping the cylinders for telltale striping. The flakes came and went, reappeared and disappeared.
I did this for 200 hours…
Gear of the Year
The gladhanders and flacks would have us believe were in the midst of an aviation renaissance. But from where we sit, it merely looks as though the patient is propped up on one elbow and taking nourishment.
But whos quibbling? There are definite signs of life in the GA industry, as evidenced by the increasing pace of new product introductions and even a new airplane model here and there.
Our annual tour of the horizon for the best products and services usually turns up more good things than bad but in our world, someone always has to finish first. With that in mind, heres our annual no-punches-pulled review of the best products weve encountered during the past year.
Produ…
Letters: September 1998
Yo Cessna Yourself
Heres my view on your Yo, Cessna commentary in the May issue of Aviation Consumer: The main reason Cessna wont build the WhizBang you propose is that there is no reason to. Why take a chance on something really new, incurring the expense, the liability, the logistics, etc?
They just don’t need to. Cessna learned we’ll from the Cardinal. There is no need for the WhizBang. Theyre selling bunches of 172s. There is minimal development cost in the redo of the old standby. The insurance liability is a known factor with which the insurers are comfortable. Production should be most efficient by now. The only real expense is the new production facility.
A…
Its Worth More Every Year, Right?
The science of flight simulation has advanced mightily in the past five years.
Yet simulating aircraft ownership remains relatively unchanged: Just stand on your back porch and fling $20 bills into the breeze. To simulate a twin, use $50 bills.
But what the heck, as investments, airplanes easily beat the underlying inflation rate, right? And most appreciate at a pace to match, say, the Standard and Poors 500, so you’ll at least get back what youve got invested in the thing. Or so goes the reasoning when youre trying to sweet-talk your spouse out of the kids college fund to step up to a turbocharged retract.
Of course, when many owners sell, the bottom line falls woefully sho…
Logbook Secrets
Sometimes its called due diligence. Some brokers consider it research or homework. To most would-be buyers, its little more than paging through a stack of records and notations that may, at times, be incomprehensible.
Whatever you call it, an exhaustive review of an airplanes logbooks is the only way you have to separate the sellers tall claims and promises from reality. This should be obvious.
Yet time and again, anxious buyers gloss over this task or skip it entirely. Nine times out of 10, theyre lucky; no undue surprises develop. But more than a few owners could have avoided buying uneconomic wrecks if theyd just examined the logs more carefully and asked a few question…
Letters: August 1998
AOPA Replies on Eagle Insurance
Your June Keep Me Covered article on American Eagle Insurance left out a key detail that negates its conclusion. And it doesnt fully acknowledge AOPAs aggressive efforts to protect both our insureds and all American Eagle policyholders, including customers of independent brokers nationwide.
Author Jon Doolittle, owner of insurance broker Sutton James, failed to say that in states where Assumption of Loss Endorsements (ALEs) are not permitted, insureds enjoyedequivalent protection under a contract between Eagle and Zurich Re-insurance Corporation (ZRC).
Rather than hang on and hope for the best, AOPA worked proactively for…
Shade to Go
Next time youre droning along on a cross country on a hot day, feel around the edges of the bezels on your avionics faceplates. In most airplanes, even ones with avionics cooling fans, theyll be hot-not warm-to the touch.
But trust us, theyre probably a lot cooler in operation than they are merely baking in the hot sun on a summer day when the airplane is on the ramp with no cockpit cover or sun screens.
We were recently astonished to learn that interior cockpit temperatures approach 200 degrees on a bright Florida day and that cant be good for the avionics, not to mention the upholstery and all the sundry stuff stored in the average airplane.
Yet as cheap as covers and sun scre…
Letters 07/98
Engine Monitors
Great article on engine monitors in the May issue. I decided to get a JPI EDM-700 with fuel flow based on my own limited research. I have a few quibbles with the product and your article, but basically think its the best available for the price on todays market. I have it mounted in the hole occupied by my old EGT location-which is now a nice paperweight-in my 1977 Skylane with an O-470U.
The reset button is inaccessible from the front and requires removal of the instrument or part of the panel for setting certain one-time-only parameters-alarm limits, carbureted or fuel injected, total fuel capacity, etc.
I don’t like the automatic mode, especially th…
More Low-Price ANR
When LightSPEEDs innovative lightweight ANR headset hit the market nearly two years ago, we had a hunch that its low price and impressive performance would carve out a healthy market niche. And thats exactly what happened.
Yet within the past six months, three new ANRs have muscled their way into whats already a crowded field. These new products represent second- and third-generation designs and include some significant innovations. Unfortunately, innovation doesnt always equal improvement.
The three new offerings come from Flightcom, Pilot and Telex. The Flightcom 6ANX and Pilot Freedom headsets are both being sold as inexpensive ANRs obviously intended to go head-to-head…