Uncategorized

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.

Sometimes the important thing is not what you say, but how you say it. Thats the secret behind Jepps new VFR+GPS charts. Its not that the information is that different than what you get from a sectional chart, but its in a form that makes it much easier to use. Forget the “VFR+GPS” title. While there is some GPS-specific data such as lat-long info for commonly-used reporting points, these charts are really replacements for your Sectional and Terminal-Area charts. Years of flying with looking at muted greens and browns make the first glance at these charts a bit jarring. Theyre much higher contrast and use a wider range of color. But that color is applied for maximum effect. The background color for terrain is much lighter than government charts. This makes all the text easier to read. In place of the faint minimum elevation figures (MEFs) on sectional charts that provide 100-300 feet of obstacle clearance for each quadrangle, the Jepp charts publish a Minimum Grid Area Altitudes that represent 1000 or 2000 feet above terrain and obstacles. The numbers are in red, so there’s no missing them whether youre planning on flying airways or GPS direct. Busy airspace is where the information density of charts is highest, and where keeping all that data readable is most important. The new charts shine here in several subtle ways. Class B and C airspace boundaries have their altitudes written on the border lines where its easy to find and mentally connect to the area in question rather than floating in the middle of that area. Frequencies for approaching these airspaces also appear clearly on the chart, as we’ll as in a black and white table on the back of the chart. Visual waypoints, common GPS fixes and even interstate highways are marked on the chart, so when the Tower asks you to report crossing I-70, you can do so with some confidence.

As we pointed out in our April issue of Aviation Consumer, there are some sweet deals on used, glass-cockpit aircraft. But for many owners, this jump in the ownership food chain might not be practical or affordable. If youre perfectly happy with your current wings (or just have good reason not to sell right now) but lust for the big-screen glass that dazzle front and center in new cockpits, you have options. Unfortunately, there are caveats a-plenty. Our definition of glass here includes a primary flight display (PFD) and some kind of modern multi-function display (MFD) and modern IFR-GPS the likes of Garmins GNS-series navigators. Traffic and satellite weather are in the mix as well. Were talking fully certified systems focused toward certificated aircraft-nothing experimental or portable installed on the panel. Step one is a review of your stock electrical system. New, all-electric aircraft require electrical-bus and electrical-system redundancy. Your old airframe likely doesnt have dual batteries, dual alternators or dual electrical busses, and equipping a 70s-vintage Skylane to these specs just isn’t going to happen. Some equipment wont accept a 14-volt input voltage, including the popular Avidyne EX500 MFD. That means a current-hungry voltage converter if installed in a 14-volt system. That brings us to the other major issue: overwhelming the electrical system of an older bird in supporting all those fancy new avionics. Many 14-volt alternators werent intended to keep up with this intense charging demand. Some owners with full panels report increased incidents of alternator failure or screen blackouts when running high-draw accessories like landing lights or gear and flap motors. Have your shop do an electrical load analysis for your proposed avionics suite. And always keep a healthy battery in the aircraft. It works hard. Reworking the original bus and installing properly rated push/pull circuit breakers and proper labeling can be surprisingly pricey and time-consuming. Is it worth it to rewire analog engine gauges and warning lights while the panel is open? How about replacing old switches with modern, lighted rockers? What about all that old wiring lurking behind the panel and woven through the airframe? This can get expensive even before putting in the new stuff.

Cessnas 177 Cardinal can best be described as one of those should-have-been products that just never…was. Sleek, good looking and with decent payload and speed, it never quite nudged the Skyhawk into retirement, as Cessna had hoped it would. Nonetheless, the airplane still has a loyal following of owners, many of whom pine for additional speed. That wish is now grantable in the form of a new turbonormalizing system now in the final certification stages at Tornado Alley Turbo in Ada, Oklahoma. TAT is we’ll known for its Bonanza and Cessna 185 TN systems, not to mention its hot selling (at least until recently) turbo system for the Cirrus SR22. The new Cardinal conversion-which retails for about $40,000, all in-adds to TATs lineup. In mid-March, we visited TATs Ada skunkworks to examine and fly the TN Cardinal RG. (Only RG owners need apply; the STC doesnt cover the fixed-gear version.) The airplane we flew was equipped with what will be the actual TN hardware, although the final dots and crossed-Ts on the paperwork were expected to be done before summer 2009.

While no single gadget is the perfect tool for everyone, some are we’ll suited to the fat section of the bell curve while others will appeal to the fringes. True Flights Flight Cheetahs 210-S portable GPS navigator falls squarely in the latter category. The system is really two components: the Flight Cheetah software, which can run on most any Windows-capable computer, and the 210-S hardware, which is a purpose-built box designed for the cockpit. The first thing you notice about the 210-S is that its big. Its roughly 8 x 5.5 x 2 inches and weighs 2.7 pounds without a backup battery. The screen is 6.5 inches, which is half an inch smaller than a Garmin 696, and there are several fat-finger buttons on the face for easy control in flight, even with gloves on. The hard drive is solid state, so it works at all altitudes. The next thing you’ll notice are all the wires. The Cheetah connects to an external GPS and XM weather receiver (which has its own box and antenna). The optional backup battery is not built into the unit, so thats another box. Add the optional external attitude gyro or Zaon traffic receiver, and you get even more boxes and wires. If you could leave all the accessory gear in the airplane, removing the 210-S and taking it home is a no-brainer. But we wouldnt want to deal with a 210-S if we were renting. True Flight experimented with Bluetooth, but felt the reliability wasnt good enough to count on.