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There’s no question that logging some time flying pixels on your desktop computer can help keep you sharp flying real instruments through real clouds. How much it helps depends on how sophisticated the simulation is and how you go about using it. So lets be crystal-clear that were talking about the bottom rung here: Whats the best choice for a simulator you can install at home to practice your procedures and scan in the half hour between cleaning up after dinner and the next episode of House? We should also set a few ground rules. You wont be able to log time for approaches flown without an instructor by your side, so we see no point in forking over big bucks for an FAA-approved system. You will want at least the basic flight controls, so expect to spend about $110 for something like CH Products Flight Sim Yoke. Helicopter controls might cost a bit more. We wouldnt bother with rudder pedals for airplanes. Plan on using your keyboard and mouse to control on-screen switches, knobs and buttons.

Its just a sad fact that a wear item could have a replacement price tag up to a third of the value of your aircraft. Thats the way it is with engines, yet most owners accept this and worry more about surviving the engine-change experience with a reliable motor that will last rather than finding the cheapest solution. But the best path to getting that reliable motor isn’t clear cut. Should you do a field overhaul or get an engine from the factory? Is it worth shipping the engine cross-country for that overhaul or is a local shop just fine? Does it matter who does the engine installation itself? Every few years, we ask our readership, and that of our sister publication AVweb.com, to weigh in with their real-world experiences on engine overhauls. The latest results are consistent with the past: Your best bet is a field overhaul from a shop with a solid track record for quality work and after-the-sale support.

I have been intrigued by the SMA Jet-A conversion since Ive known about it. It was interesting to actually hear about the result in your article and video in the February 2010 issue. Still, analyzing the $85,000 for conversion versus $25,000 for an overhauled Continental, its a tough sell. I can do three Continental overhauls for the price of the conversion. So, even at a lower cost per block hour to operate the SMA diesel, its hard for me to imagine someone recouping the $60,000 additional cost of the conversion during a reasonable period of ownership, assuming you do it at a normal O-470 TBO.

Compared to piston aviation fuels research, mushroom farming is a daylight operation. Thats not to say the fuel work is secretive, its just that it goes on more or less constantly, but nothing meaningful seems to come of it. At least you can have the mushrooms on your salad. Against this backdrop of apparent non-action comes yet another entrant into the 100LL replacement sweepstakes, this one called G100UL. This new fuel comes at the problem from far out in left field from a company known more for burning fuel than creating it: General Aviation Modifications, Inc., the Ada, Oklahoma, mod house that shook up the hidebound world of aircraft engine research with its radical ideas on lean-of-peak operation and an almost religious conviction that turbonormalized engines are better than turbocharged engines. With G100UL, GAMI is again running against the grain and, to a degree, challenging the accepted notion that before a new fuel can be widely tested, it has to be certified. But, says GAMIs George Braly, thats backwards. There’s no point in reducing entire forests to pulp to certify a fuel if refineries arent interested in or cant build the stuff profitably, thus GAMIs idea is to field its new developmental fuel to a select fleet under an STC while simultaneously pursuing regulatory approval. To a degree, that will test the economics, too, since production will have to rise to at least the pilot-plant level to supply a small fleet experiment.

In February 1996, the FAAs Technical Standard Order (TSO) C129 put IFR GPS navigation on the map. It was a complex installation with equipment that was quirky to program, but early adopters gained GPS-direct flight plans and GPS approaches-even though GPS was “supplementary navigation.” Todays IFR GPS installations are all about the augmented WAAS signal thats worthy of sole-means navigation. Theyre still a source of confusion and expense, but WAAS installations yield impressive automation and capability. Before you decide if WAAS is for you, you need to understand some behind-the-scenes facts and why you could be disadvantaged without WAAS GPS in your aircraft.

Because of aviations higher-than-normal dingbat factor, I don’t see many business ideas in the industry that make my head swoon. Most of them make my head hurt, frankly. Were covering two exceptions in this issue, the Next Dimension Aircraft Cirrus mod project and the basic idea of aircraft partnerships. In a way, the two are related.

Interesting reading about the latest from Garmin in your December 2009 issue. A question from those of us that fly open cockpit: Will the touchscreen work with gloves on? My iPhone wont. This could be another case where “improvements” take a whole class of user out of the market.

Its always interesting to contemplate general aviations boom-and-bust cycles. While exceptions certainly abound, it seems every other decade since the 1930s has included introduction of new aircraft or new technologies that further advance the state of the art. The 1970s were an upswing, avocado-green vinyl upholstery and Continentals Tiara engine notwithstanding. In addition to the iconic taper-wing Piper Cherokees, Cessnas original Citation and Beechs Model 200 Super King Air, the 70s also ushered in the Rockwell Commander 112/114 series of four-seat piston singles. For years, what was then called North American Rockwell had been trying to find the right mix of ramp appeal, performance and features to enter the general aviation market in a big way. Early attempts-the Lark and Darter, and efforts to revive the Meyers 200-didnt work out as the company hoped.

Its inevitable that when you buy any product that has a dozen or more features, you use a few of them consistently and the rest might as we’ll not be there. High-end gadgets and features look good in the marketing copy, but why pay for extras you don’t really need? And thats exactly the situation with XM WX Weather, a first-rate system thats a great flight safety enhancer, but one that offers far more data than you need. In this article, we’ll examine what each service provides and explain why you can get by with the most basic service or, at the most, the mid-priced upgrade. As is the fashion in modern marketing, XM WX Weather offers three tiers of service-the more you spend, the more you get. While each package adds more features, it also essentially doubles the cost. The Aviator package was the launch product and it hasnt changed much in features and price since it was first introduced. At $49.99 per month, it has nearly a dozen weather products and its introduction fundamentally changed the rules for inflight weather awareness. Probing for the cost-sensitive bottom of the market, a couple of years later, XM WX Weather introduced Aviator LT, a reduced version of the Aviator package that, at $29.99 per month, stripped off nearly two-thirds of the Aviator services features, leaving only the NEXRAD mosaic, METARs, TAFs, precipitation type and TFRs.

In our review of oil filters in the August 2009 issue, we picked Champions line as the best overall choice in a field where both Tempest and Kelly Aerospace offer competitive products. Tempest wrote us this month to contest our findings, contending that our research glossed over some key technical advantages of Tempest filters. What follows is a summary of Tempests response. First, the filter bypass valve. Tempest says we overlooked what it argues is the “biggest safety enhancement made in spin-on oil filters in years.” Specifically, says Tempest, is its safety containment cap surrounding the bypass valve. Bypass valves have been known to disintegrate at the spot welds, spewing bits of the valve into the engine or blocking the filter outlet hole, starving the engine of oil. Tempest says its containment cup will eliminate this problem. “Additionally,” says the company, “the absence of a gasket under the valve eliminates the potential for leakage.”

Its almost a truism that aircraft performance numbers are a smoke-and-mirrors act where best-case scenarios are pushed forward as simple facts. Looking at the numbers we have to remind ourselves that real-world compromises-no, you cant fill the tanks and the seats-are kept off the table. Were beginning to smell the distinct aroma of aviation optimism, spiked with a twist of marketing, in the new arena of electric aircraft. With an opportunity for those potential buyers to put deposits down on kits or power systems within the next 12 months, its time to take a close look at where this new industry stands. Electric flight in enclosed light airplanes is practical with todays technology. Yuneec International and Electric Aircraft have both flown proof-of-concept aircraft on battery power for dozens of hours. Sonex has a couple of years invested in systems development. None of these companies have hit the two-person, two-hour, 85 MPH mark, but they are close enough that we can believe its within the grasp of incremental improvement. The bad news is that we have no solid way to benchmark these designs. This is a new arena where we can only make educated guesses.

Bendix-King (by Honeywell) has been making an aggressive bid to reestablish itself as a market leader in avionics. Last year their AV8OR handheld staked a firm hold on the low-end portable GPS market. Now their AV8OR Ace is taking a swipe at the high end currently occupied by the Garmin GPSMAP 496 and 696, as we’ll as Tablet PC-based Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) like ChartCase. At 1.25 pounds and slightly less than eight by five inches, the Aces size is just about right for the cockpit. We found it easy to mount with a window suction cup or yoke mount in a couple of aircraft without it blocking any critical items. Its also light and small enough to comfortably hold in your hand or lap. The screen is seven inches diagonally, and is touch sensitive. Much of the Aces software is driven by on-screen buttons that appear when you touch the screen and disappear after a user-defined time. This keeps the interface clean and context-sensitive for easy use (with one caveat, see below). There are hard keys along one side of the unit for direct navigation, zooming in and out, cycling through the main viewing screens and getting to the top-level menu.