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When planning major avionics upgrades, autopilots rank near the top. A panel full of integrated glass or even a single-screen Aspen will be lacking without autopilot integration. But adding a new autopilot could be a budget-blowing proposition. For most go-places aircraft the investment is worth it, especially with modern AHRS-driven interfaces upping the ante on automation and long-term reliability. Heres an overview of market offerings for retrofit autopilots. One size wont fit all, and thats without covering systems for LSAs or Experimentals. Well look at those in a future article.

In all the years weve been covering avionics, no piece of technology has been more confusing, uncertain and changeable as ADS-B. While NextGen may be the epitome of force-fed government technology, you’ll eventually need to comply with an ADS-B mandate.The equipage mandate is still on schedule for the year 2020. Thats a long time given the rapidly changing nature of avionics. Buying equipment now is risky, yet the race for affordable ADS-B solutions has begun. Some are even introducing low-cost portable ADS-B products, an idea thats putting consumers at ease. Which low-cost products will withstand the scrutiny of the FAA and the test of time? We don’t know. But here are some contenders.

Most-conscious pilots (is there any other kind?) will tend to use resources with care. These days we don’t run around as much at full power, guzzling fuel, and by the same token, those of us who routinely carry an oxygen system for high-altitude flight often reserve its use for the times we feel its absolutely necessary. After all, getting a bottle refilled on a long trip can be a real (and expensive) pain in the, er, cannula. Shift the paradigm-say, make the oxygen available to the pilot essentially unlimited-and the usage model changes significantly. Now you don’t think twice about putting on the tube for higher-altitude flights and you can finally consider adhering to the recommendation to suck oxygen above 5000 feet MSL at night.

Its almost a law in aircraft sales that for each level-light sport, piston singles, biz jets-the majority of buyers want the top of that class. LSAs are no different and every manufacturer we talked to over the years has found the same: deluxe models with all the trimmings outsell the budget offerings. Thats why we see $150,000 LSAs out there with Italian leather seats and cockpit avionics rivaling new airliners. No problem for a pilot who managed to sell his Bonanza and has the cash, but wasnt the whole point behind light sport the creation of options for inexpensive flying?

There to now with avgas? Following a flurry of activity at EAA AirVenture-briefings and meetings, mainly-has the flag inched forward toward a replacement for 100LL? In short, its hard to tell. If there’s substantive progress, its occurring behind closed doors, although the venue has changed. By early September, the FAA revealed a generally positive test result on a 150-hour test cell run with Swifts UL102 fuel, a variant tof several blends it has developed. Meanwhile, General Aviation Modifications Inc. still has before the FAA a request to approve its G100UL via STC.

I enjoyed your article on the iPad. I had been planning to write to tell you how good it is for an approach plate solution. If you buy the SkyCharts Pro app for $20 per year, you can wirelessly download all the enroute, sectional, terminal area charts and approach plates, along with STARs, SIDs and AFD. Current charts seamlessly delivered for $20 per year and you get an iPad for free, if you figure the cost of the Jepp or NOS subscription that you save will pay for it. Do your flight planning on DUATs or some other Website.

The modern car engine-even a cheap one-is such a marvel that you can turn the key without thinking about its once-in-a-million failure-rate ECU, its direct-fire coils and fuel injectors that can paint the Mona Lisa in 93-octane pulses. Oh, and if you cant get 93 octane, no worries, the ECU will adjust the timing to burn 91. Were it so simple with aircraft engines. And not that Lycoming and Continental havent tried to make it that simple and they are still trying. Lycomings latest and most sophisticated attempt is the new IE2 for integrated electronic engine. Integrated means electronically customized for the airframe and dancing cheek to cheek with the airplanes EFIS and it also means full-bore electronic control of nearly everything.

Modern aircraft audio systems are self-contained control boxes and can handle nearly every aspect of cockpit and cabin communications. They command the radios in the avionics stack, provide seat-to-seat intercom function and even offer high-fidelity music and telephone capability. But for basic aircraft, like the many LSAs and older tailwheel tandems on the ramps, a basic standalone intercom might get the job done for a lower cost while still providing high-quality audio and a decent level of functionality. These systems don’t control the radios, so if you have a couple of coms and navs in the stack, you’ll need an audio switching panel.

Not 10 seconds after Wilbur cracked up the Flyer that cold December morning at Kitty Hawk, Orville must have asked, “whats this gonna cost me?” And weve been asking ever since, never more so than now as the future of 100LL hangs in the uncertain balance between readily available and extinction. As potential replacements loom hazily on the horizon-and frankly, there arent many of them-its fair to start asking what they might cost. Or to cynically turn the question on its head: Does anyone have the first clue?

I wouldnt be the slightest bit surprised if an archeologist rooting around the middens of some ancient society unearthed, along with pottery shards and crude tools, a Bendix 1200 magneto, with the part number intact. Magnetos are what industrial historians sometimes call “persistent technology.” Gee, ya think? In this issue, were reporting on the demise of the Bendix dual mag, a cursed thing which represents one of evolutionary blind alleys that often dog industrial development. Its not that it was really that awful, its just that the idea of two mags in the same housing struck some people as like putting a screen door in a submarine.

Despite all the blather about electronic charts and the paperless cockpit, dead-tree charts still rule. If that sounds depressingly old school, the good news is we have choices, even if its among only two basic publishers. Another piece of good news is we can put down one publishers chart and pick up the others without too much confusion. While there are qualitative differences between the two publishers, a major distinction is how they go about distributing updates.

New general aviation aircraft are as iconic as Cessnas 310. Whether because of its aggressive ramp presence, its supporting role in a television adventure series or its suitability for a wide range of missions, the 310 is what many non-pilots recall when piston twins come up in conversation. Its arguably the first “modern” light twin and certainly a classic. While the 310 is all of those things, its also a complicated machine, production of which ended almost 30 years ago. The tall landing gear might be thought of as delicate and its systems demanding, both to maintain and operate. But it still offers substantial transportation value, and the many different variants that were built as the model evolved means it shouldnt be hard to find the right one for your mission.