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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.

Youve probably read about Moores law, the much-quoted axiom that the number of components that can be placed inexpensively in an integrated circuit grows exponentially. It roughly doubles every two years. Along with these advances come faster processing speeds, more and cheaper memory and displays with greater pixel count. Washing ashore in this great tidal wave of technology is the Kindle DX, which we review on page 22 of this issue. The Kindle is Amazons highly touted e-reader that distinguishes itself from other e-readers only to the extent that Amazon is flogging it to death. The very idea of the e-reader is to put the consumer at the cusp of deciding whether to be simply a reader of things or a user of physical books, newspapers or magazines. Inevitably, this technology will be used in ways it was never intended to be. Right on schedule, its being pressed into service as an electronic approach plate reader. At this task-compared to paper-it is compromised. My conclusion is that it works surprisingly well, but thats not the same as “works well.”

On your review of the Diamond L360 in the July 2009 issue, a note on the fuel burn: It cannot be 10.8 GPH per side, as you stated. I had a Twin Comanche-same engines-and burned 11 GPH total for years. Your correspondent mustve meant 10.8 GPH total. My Aero Commander straight 500 with 250-HP engines burned 22 GPH both sides, which corresponds with what your correspondent stated the Diamond would burn. Just so you know.

There’s a saying that good design obviates the need for training. Thats been generally true of the Garmin portables and is basically true for the supersized GPSMAP 696. The added capability does increase complexity, and a little training can go a long way toward getting the most out of your investment. Garmin has put its hat into the training fray with the GPSMAP 696/965 eLearning Program. The product tis actually produced by the same company that developed the successful Vflite training CD-ROMs for the GNS 430/530 units and that created the G1000 training currently sold by Jeppesen. Just like those programs, this one walks you through the pages and functions of the unit with an animated mock-up of the GPS (complete with all button-pushes and knob-twists), written text and narration. The lessons are organized by the GPS pages and the phases of flight in which you would use them. However, when the program needs to show you an example from some other part of the country, it does so. You can skip ahead to any lesson you want, and you can turn off the narration and just skim the text if you want to zip through the lessons faster.

In the light-twin world, there’s Cessnas 337 Skymaster push-me/pull-you design-plus a handful of Adam 500s-and then there’s everything else. Eliminating asymmetric thrust from the single-engine handling equation was what Cessna had in mind when it brought the Skymaster to market. It succeeded, since the airplane handles pretty much the same when one or both engines are turning. But some compromises were made along the way, many of which can hike maintenance costs. In an engine-out situation, conventional piston twins generally need to be handled with kid gloves lest the airplane get too slow and roll over on its back. Close to the ground, that can be very bad. Which is one reason Cessna aligned the Skymasters two engines with the airframe centerline, offering pilots the safety of a second engine without the penalty of adverse handling. If one quits, identify it, feather it and don’t worry about the dead-foot, dead-engine drill. The FAA even granted the 337 its own class rating, limiting pilots to centerline-thrust twins only. That part of Cessnas plan worked, since there’s little question the Skymaster is easier to fly on a single engine than a conventional twin. But, since the VMC rollover accident doesnt happen that often in the real world, the airplanes overall accident record isn’t that much better than conventional twins.