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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.

In American business, Donald Trump is variously regarded as a helmet-haired blowhard or the most audacious businessman on the face of planet. But when it comes to audacity, compared to Christian Dries, the CEO of Diamond Industries, Trump is a painfully shy Girl Scout in a pink party dress. This is the only rational conclusion you can make after reading a recent press release explaining the certification of the new Austro diesel engine under Dries guidance in Austria. In a crash 42-month program, Dries spent-according to the press release-the princely sum of $62 million (48 million Euro) to develop the Austro and set up a factory to produce it. Lets run the playhead back to 2002, when Diamond announced its audacious plans to build a new twin in a market where twin values were practically in free fall. And, oh, by the way, it would have diesel engines which hadnt been certified yet. Fast forward to 2008: The Thielert engine economics made security-backed mortgages look like a lead-pipe cinch and by last spring, Thielert was in bankruptcy. That meant 500 or so Twin Stars were suddenly without a long-term viable engine. It also created a corps of angry customers.

Given the number of product recalls, airworthiness directives and service bulletins floating like confetti on New Years, the phrase “quality control” has a certain hollow ring in general aviation. Owners have become understandably cynical that few companies in the industry are capable of-or at least committed to-building quality parts, none more so than some recent buyers of Engine Component Inc.s Titan cylinder line. As much as any single component line, Titan cylinders from ECI have allowed field shops to remain competitive against Lycoming and Continental, who would otherwise own the market and could set prices accordingly. (They may be about to do that-see the sidebar on opposite page.) But the Titan product line ran into a snag last year and both the FAAs and ECIs response has left some owners steamed. The FAA contends that a serial-number-defined range of Titan jugs is sufficiently at risk for barrel-to-head separation to require an AD calling for 50-hour compression test inspections. But ECI demurs on this, claiming there’s nothing wrong with the Titan line, while conceding there have been at least 45 head-to-barrel separations in a population of about 16,000 cylinders. If the cylinders were defective-as the FAA seems to claim-ECI would presumably be on the hook for making customers whole in some way. But ECI disagrees with the AD and says there’s nothing wrong with the Titan line. Customers are caught in the middle-most get no help from ECI, but have to pay for compression checks at 50-hour intervals. Thats not a trivial cost, by the way. Forty AD checks are required over the 2000-hour life of a typical engine and at $150 per, that adds $6000 to the TBO run. Its essentially the equivalent of paying twice as much for the cylinders. One owner recently contacted us to point out aircraft equipped with the affected Titans have reduced market appeal-if not value-compared to those equipped with other cylinders.

Amazingly, even the latest speed champions from Kerrville-the Mooney Type S Acclaim-trace their heritage to the original Mooney type certificate. The basic airframe has evolved over the years, but the concept of a semi-monocoque rear fuselage mated to a metal-skinned steel-tube cabin, a long and slender tapered wing and distinctive reverse tail has endured. The J-model evolved most directly from the F-model, which was itself descended from the short-body C-models of the mid-1970s. The first J-model or 201-the number derives from its supposed top cruising speed in MPH-appeared in 1977. It sported a 200-HP Lycoming four-banger-the IO-360-improved landing gear and a sloping windshield, among other changes. All of these were the product of a concerted effort by Mooney to kick the model line up a couple of notches. The 201 is, to the surprise of many, very much the work of the late LeRoy LoPresti. LoPresti had a long aeronautical background, including a stint on the Apollo lunar program at Grumman. He became a near legend for his ability to get the utmost from an airplane through aerodynamic cleanups, which hed done with success on the Grumman Tiger. Applying his magic to the M20F model, LoPresti and the Mooney team created the M20J. A number of changes were made, the most visible being a new cowling and a more aerodynamic windshield. The interior was addressed, too, with adjustable seats and a contemporary flat panel with organized electricals and circuit breakers rather than the typical dogs breakfast arrangement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Heres my definition of hell: Being marched at gunpoint into a small, windowless room with a laptop and being forced to write about lean-of-peak flying for eternity. Such is my fatigue with the subject, that where you have dreams about flying above sun-warmed cloud tops and landing on seaside runways, I have nightmares about peak pressure traces and runaway CHTs. The reason this is so is because 15 years ago, I got caught up in the thick of the leaning debate, wrote reams about it and figured it was time for the world to move on. But it hasnt moved on. Comes this note from a reader: “My crusty, dinosaur belt-and-suspenders-old-school mechanic disabused me of lean of peak when I suggested it for my O-550. Instead, per his instructions, I cruise at 20 inches with 2300 RPM, 50 to 75 degrees ROP and burn an astounding 15.6 GPH…the engine went for 1500 hours before needing a top and in 20 years with two O-470s, Ive had to overhaul only one jug. Using this anecdotal evidence, I suspect that its the overhaul companies that are advertising the fuel savings by pushing LOP procedures…Ol Crusty wins this one.”