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Although the design is more than four decades old, the Cessna 177 Cardinal—with its racy sloped windshield, wide doors and strutless wings—looks more modern than the newest Skyhawks coming out of Cessna’s Independence, Kansas, plant. Yet, sadly, the Cardinal is a poster child for why innovation and audacity in general aviation development has often met dismal results in the market. Despite high expectations for a design that would usher in new thinking in light aircraft, the Cardinal had a rocky start and was gone from Cessna’s inventory a decade after it emerged.

Just how crashworthy is your aircraft’s cabin? Here’s hoping you’ll never find out. Our safety refurbishment article that begins on page 7 contains a number of useful tips for preparedness, plus a rundown of aftermarket products for raising the bar on cabin crashworthiness and occupant safety. For years, I thought little about the issue, other than snugging the seat belt during the takeoff roll and instructing passengers how to operate the cabin door and emergency windows. And then I was in a crash.

I just received my February 2014 issue of Aviation Consumer and read with interest the article on turbochargers, since I’ve been flying my Mooney 231 converted to a 252 for the past 6500 hours and 27 years. I was surprised at the estimated turbo “surcharge” of $25 per hour, with “most of it being for a $2200 overhaul at 1200 hours.” If you were to put aside $25 per hour for 1200 hours (to cover a $2200 overhaul), that would be $30,000. Let’s say the engine made it to 1500 hours. The turbo allowance would have amounted to $37,500, which for me would more than cover both the engine and turbo overhaul.

While the long-awaited unleaded replacement for 100LL might not quite be ready for the fuel farm, as of early December 2013, it looked to be at least hovering over the horizon. Shell surprised the industry with a late-in-the-year announcement that it has developed an unleaded 100-octane fuel that it intends to submit to the FAA’s fuel approval process.

The internal GPS in Apple devices uses so-called Assisted GPS data from cellular towers, but the receiver wasn’t designed for aviation. That’s why it’s not uncommon for an iPad or iPod to struggle with maintaining a GPS signal lock in flight. That makes a remote GPS receiver necessary.

Until the advent of the Pitts Special, aerobatics was a horizontal affair, even in the hairy-chested, fuel-sucking, 450-HP Boeings and Wacos. Practitioners pirouetted under the stern God of Energy Management—gravity and drag meant vertical maneuvers were brief events.

New airplane owners lament to me that they were taught nothing about the process of buying, owning and maintaining an aircraft when they learned to fly. Accordingly, their aircraft ownership education came through the back alleys, as it were. The quality and thoroughness of that tuition made for some expensive mistakes—now they are constantly looking for good information to keep from making bad purchases. They want to know the rules.

Pilots are known for large watches and an affinity for gadgets—high cool factors being important. If size and cool factor were the sole measures, Garmin’s new $450 D2 Pilot Watch is the winner.

David Clark has a lot to prove with the new DC Pro-X noise-canceling headset. Not only does the mid-priced ANR headset market offer a healthy variety of good-performing models—including the Lightspeed Sierra and Telex Stratus 30XT, to name a couple—but the company’s X11 model was a disappointing performer, based on our evaluation and feedback from other users.

There has long been a subset of pilots with a certain sense of adventure and the burning desire to own an aerobatic airplane. While most lust after an aerial hotrod such as one of the Extra 300 series or a Sukhoi Su-29, economic reality means putting something a little less impressive into the hangar.

A new engine is only as good as the cylinders the shop or owner picks and cylinders have, episodically, proved problematic. As we go to press in early September, this is indeed the case with an extensive manufacturing run of Engine Components International cylinders that the FAA proposes to remove from service via a massive AD.

You might not think about cabin lighting until you reach for the overhead light switch on a dark night and nothing happens. Maybe you dropped something on the floor or between the seats, or maybe you need to read a paper chart (remember them?).