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In your tire test article in the April 2008 issue, you say “Were going to stick with comparing tread depth, wear rates and price to determine the best value.” That sounds fine, but when I look at your overall value ranking, your conclusions do not seem to agree with your data. Based on your stated criteria for measuring value, the Condor is the most cost effective or best and the Flight Custom III is the least. I fly a Mooney M20J and make about 100 landings per year. My tires (Condor or Michelin Aviator) usually last about four or five years. So, it seems like the max landings are overstated by a factor of 10.

The aftermarket has waited for what seems an eternity for a reasonably priced glass alternative to primary steam-gauge flight instruments. With much fanfare and no small risk, Albuquerque-based Aspen Avionics fills the void with their EFD1000 series PFD at a cost thats easy on the budget. Its not a big-screen PFD and its still too early to call the product a universal slam-dunk winner, but in our view Aspen is off to a great start. Enjoying some sales success with the AT300 terrain awareness/mini MFD combo, Aspen brings its second product to the market in an impressively short time frame-less than a year since its introduction at EAA AirVenture 2007. Moreover, the new Aspen Evolution hardware design mimics no other existing product. This is refreshing from a young company living in an environment where successful products from Garmin and Avidyne have set a lofty standard.

These days, a cursory glance around the mall parking lot reveals many customers prefer a vehicle pregnant with flexibility, the sport-utility vehicle (SUV). Extremely popular with growing families, soccer moms and businesspeople spending lots of time on the road, SUVs have all but eliminated the station wagon from the automobile marketplace simply by expanding a theme. That need for flexibility is also present when considering a personal airplane. Some airplanes are optimized for speed, with little flexibility in loading. Some arent, their designers preferring to carry people and things reliably over long distances or into small areas. Compromises can be made, but the results sometimes please few customers. Perhaps the poster-child exception is an airplane like the Cessna 206 Stationair, which carries the station-wagon theme to one of several conclusions. Its not fast, nor is it that slow, but it is stable, rugged, reliable, has six real seats and is remarkable for being able to carry a half-ton or so after the tanks are filled. You can put it on floats, turbocharge it, dump skydivers from it, and carry small packages or just your family. As one owner wrote us, “Cessna tried to market this airplane as an executive airplane. This is ridiculous. Everyone I know flies it as a utility airplane.”

A hidden pitfall in buying a used airplane is underestimating the replacement cost of its autopilot. Worse yet, owners may pay little attention to the health of the existing system during the demo ride. Dont be fooled by the sales ad saying the autopilot was a flagship model with huge capabilities. It could be as old as the airplane and ready to tank. (A 30-year-old piece of equipment is ancient in the electronics world.) Autopilots are major systems and replacement cost can double that of a new engine. You can eliminate this high-stakes gotcha during the pre-buy inspection, or better yet, during the aircraft search. At the least, autopilots can be helpful bargaining tools when closing the deal. Some systems you’ll want to think twice about getting involved with. Others are keepers. No matter what you choose, there are a couple of sound strategies for upgrading older systems.

What do you get when you take Paul Bunyan out of the nort woods, force him to part with Babe the blue ox, exchange his wool shirt, boots and blue jeans for an Armani suit and bring him to a trendy cocktail party? A great-looking guy with muscles that fill the sleeves of his suit, who curses, spits on the floor, drains the entire punch bowl and, after offending everyone, staggers out with as much of the buffet as he can carry. Fortunately for Cessna, airplanes don’t behave like humans, so when it decided to dress up one of the most successful back country, dirt strip, beat-it-up-and-haul-anything airplanes in history, the result turned out to be refined, classy and welcome anywhere. Plus, its easy to fly and has a potty.

Twice a week. On average, thats how often GA pilots run out of gas. One reason for this-we surmise-is that pilots either don’t know how to manage fuel or they just do it poorly. The iffy gas gauges found in typical legacy airplanes aggravate the problem. Although the real reason for fuel exhaustion lies between the pilots ears, there’s a not-too-expensive upgrade that can help: a fuel totalizer. It will provide instantaneous fuel consumption data along with fuel remaining, endurance and, perhaps most important, a reliable indication of lean state. With gas at $6 a gallon, you need all the help you can get. When connected to a loran or GPS, a totalizer can supply distance-to-empty and reserve-at-destination information, along with your real-time mileage. Most fuel totalizers are stand-alone products; others require either a compatible GPS or an installed engine monitor to do their thing. Either way, none will guarantee you wont run out of fuel, but you’ll have to work at it.

At the dawn of the last century, it didnt take the Wright brothers long to figure out that wings stall at a measurable angle of attack. Student pilots are taught this concept, then promptly trained to forget about it and use airspeed to detect an impending stall. Thats because light aircraft have airspeed indicators, but they don’t have angle of attack indicators. Yet there’s no reason they shouldnt have these gadgets and, in fact, there are four companies hawking such prod- ucts. The argument for AoA indicators is convincing. By learning to fly angle of attack rather than airspeed, an airplane can be flown more precisely at slow airspeeds, improving short field performance and reducing stall/spin surprises.

General aviation seems to be always girding for the next big fight for its survival. If its not user fees, security restrictions or fuel prices, its the constant rear-guard action against local airport closures. For 2008 and beyond, the epic battle may be over the continued availability of 100LL avgas. Environmental groups have revived the effort to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate 100LL out of existence. At the risk of being labeled a tree-hugging heretic, I wont mind a bit if EPA finally agrees that leaded avgas has to go. Lets look at this rationally. First, although no one could argue that leaded fuels are remotely green, its also true that avgas represents such a tiny slice of the worlds refined fuel supplies that the volume of lead is miniscule.

In your “WSIs New Datalink: Lots of Display Choices” in the December 2007 issue, you said, “As datalink technology has matured, we find that pilots are still interested in a select core group of weather products which include NEXRAD, winds aloft, METARS, TAFs and perhaps lightning. While the other products might be gravy, most owners can do without them, saving $20 per month.” Winds aloft is not part of the basic product of either WxWorx or WSI. If you want the winds aloft product, then you have to spend the extra $20 per month.

These were your grandfathers airplanes. After World War II, Piper, Aeronca, Taylorcraft, Luscombe and ERCO (Engineering and Research Corp., maker of the Ercoupe)-cranked out thousands of easy-to-fly two-seaters to meet temporary post-war demand. Today, you can buy one of these LSA-qualified antique airplanes for around $25,000. Spend more, get more; less and look for rust, worn engines and old fabric. Many old airplanes qualify for LSA provided theyre two-seaters or smaller with a max gross weight of 1320 pounds. Well review five popular models: Pipers J-3, the Aeronca 7AC, Taylorcraft BC-12D, Luscombe 8A and the Ercoupe 415C, the only tri-geared airplane in the lineup.

Shopping for an altitude encoder is about as exciting as watching paint dry. But in modern avionics, they play a key role in the automation and, the sad truth is, they break and need to be replaced. So when your shop asks which one to buy, you’ll want to have an answer. Usually, unless ATC barks about a faulty Mode C trace, most owners wont give the pressure-altitude encoding system a second thought. But if yours acts up in the middle of a flight through Class B airspace, youre not going to be very popular. Also, nav management and autopilot systems depend on these little gadgets. Given the relatively low cost of new encoders, its silly to not consider replacing one thats seen many years of service. In this article, we’ll cover the various options for inputting pressure altitude to your avionics, offer advice on replacing tired encoders and we’ll suggest ways to ensure reliable, accurate Mode C operation.

The emerging Light Sport Aircraft market has ignited new interest in airplanes at the $100,000 price point and below. Most of these airplanes are composites, but buyers not interested in spending that much are looking hard at older LSA-compliant taildraggers-Cubs and Champs, for instance. That means renewed interest in a technology as old as aviation itself-fabric covering.