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An emerging market of standby EFIS displays tempt the budget with jet cockpit appeal. We look at three models worth considering.

The Tire Pressure Monitor System provides a hands-free way to check all-important tire pressure on pre-flight. It’s rugged and easy to install.

While it’s easy to peg GA’s continuing decline on rising avgas prices or threadbare FBO aircraft, the reality is more diverse. It’s a “death by a thousand cuts,” where cost and the fleet are major wounds, but free time, demographics, and a score of other factors play in.

The fragile relationship between avionics shops and aircraft owners is sometimes stressed at the end of a project. That’s partly because some owners have unrealistic expectations, assuming the aircraft will be released right after a flight test.

If you’re stepping up into the world of higher-end twins and some high-flying singles, you’ll eventually be faced with maintenance of onboard weather radar. Upgrading and maintaining weather radar is an expensive investment, and the benefits of real-time ship’s weather radar might not be obvious to today’s datalink pilot. But resist the urge to yank ship radar from the airframe—it still has its place. On a recent trip up the East coast in a small twin, we were picking our way along the back edge of a slow-moving line of Gulf-fed buildups that offered no shortage of drama for hundreds of miles. It was a tense flight, but tempered by the NEXRAD images steadily arriving from XM. But as we motored closer to a large cluster of buildups, XM’s image just wasn’t jiving with our view through the windscreen. A watchful controller then offered a heading through a gap that would have been through the heart of a red NEXRAD return.

When we last looked at Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) in 2008, the global satellites were still listening on 121.5 and the cost of a fancy 406 MHz ELT could hit $4000. Today the only people who might hear your cry for help on 121.5 are CAP patrols or a passing airliner, and 406 MHz ELTs can be had for $600-$1400. (See the June 2010 Aviation Consumer for the most recent review of these units.) Is there still a place for PLBs the cockpit? We think so. Not everyone has or wants to upgrade to a 406 MHz ELT. Even if the hardware cost isn’t off-putting, the bill for the required rewiring might be. If you end up in the water, the PLB can stay with you even if the plane sinks. If you’re in remote territory, you can let the ELT activate on its own and have your own PLB to activate after the ELT battery runs out. It’s almost always best to stay with your downed aircraft, but you can easily take the PLB with you if need be. And you can take it on a hike even if you didn’t crash.

Even though I parked the Cubbie on a grass field for the beauty shot above, I’m really not much about the romance of flight. While I savor the fragrance of wet turf mixed with avgas exhaust as much as anyone, the thought of a $5500 annual—and I’ve paid them—tends to turn the rose-colored glasses into a darker shade of cynical. Not that I expect to ever pay a $5500 annual for the Cub, which is exactly the best reason for owning a legacy LSA—not the magic of slipping the surly bonds on rag wings, but the smug satisfaction of doing it for the price of a cheap date at Bob’s Big Boy. How to do that? Split the cost of an already cheap airplane two ways, three ways or four ways. If owning your own airplane increasingly sounds unaffordable, it’s much less so in a partnership to the point that the monthly cost can be we’ll under even a modest car payment. There’s no pretending the capabilities are remotely similar, but if you want to fly or even own, there’s an affordable way to get there.

The Telex line of lightweight headsets, both with and without ANR, is very popular—even dominant—in the relatively quiet cockpits of large corporate and commercial jets. Many new light jets are delivered with two Telex headsets as standard equipment. Unfortunately, this leads many first-time jet pilots to believe the headsets are adequate for regular use in light jet cockpits. We have found this not to be the case. As the flight progresses and hearing fatigue sets in, it’s usually a matter of when, not if, pilots start missing radio calls if they’re using lightweight, on-the-ear headsets. The common fix is to get full-cup, over-the-ear headsets common in turboprops and pistons.

As terrific as on-airport cafés and crew cars are, there are plenty of times a few inconvenient miles separate the airport from your real destination. A bicycle small and light enough to carry with you could make all the difference in multiplying your aircraft’s utility. The good news is that the recent surge of interest in biking has brought several more folding bike options onto the market. We’ll just look at compact folding bikes—small wheels and frames to minimize space and weight. There are also full-size folding bikes that we may look at in a later issue.

Airplanes, like people, often start out being one thing but as they age, they become something else entirely. And so it is with Cessna’s now-venerable Caravan that began life as an unglamorous box hauler that few would ever see on the ramp in daylight. It then became a niche utility airplane for the bush, capable of hauling not just the fisherman, but their camp and a couple of boats, too. Of late, it’s finding yet another niche as a short-haul commuter airplane.

We’re not exactly big on heaping kudos on products that don’t exist. On the other hand, we know an exceptional idea when we see one and at least a couple of those are trickling out of tiny little Pipistrel Aircraft in Slovenia, thus we are picking Pipistrel as our company of the year for its innovation and creativity in aircraft design.

During the summer of 1968—and I’ll date myself here a little—I was putting the finishing touches on my first car. It was a 1956 Chevy rodded up with a 283, fuel-injection pistons, a Duntov cam, a 411 rear—the works. I could never get the fueling right and as was the custom in those days, I kept throwing carburetors at the problem until in a fit of supreme pathetic excess, I borrowed a friend’s Edelbrock manifold mounted with three two-barrel Holly carbs. That did it. It also yielded gas mileage of about 8 MPG which, even in the days of 28-cent-a-gallon gas, was unsustainable on my summer-job salary. My next car was a Volkswagen. An economist would call this price elasticity response, but I called it sanity.