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Although anyone who learned to fly during the 1970s suffered the 90 dB din of an unmuffled cabin, thats old school now. These days, we all wear headsets and panels have audio systems or at least intercoms, which make the endeavor more civilized. We see ever more airplanes that have integrated audio panels with built-in intercoms. Even the basic current production audio switching panels have on-board voice-activated stereo intercoms, which place all of the audio controls in a single console. This saves room on the panel and streamlines installation.

Any owner whos recently suffered the experience can tell you that sending an airplane to the paint shop is a six-week, $12,000 crap shoot. Thats if youre lucky and the shop is on its game. Dont be surprised if the airplane is down for three months and you get it back only after paying an invoice 25 percent higher than you agreed to. The world thus fairly wonders if you can buy a decent paint job for under $20,000 and expect an on- time delivery. In our view, there are enough shops out there capable of delivering first-rate paint jobs, but this much should also be obvious: If you expect speck-free dripless perfection for $8000, the people who call you delusional are right. Even the very best paint jobs will have flaws. The secret to satisfaction is to understand whats acceptable quality and whats not. Youll also need to have sufficient negotiating skills to arrive at a mutual understanding with the shop about what constitutes a complete and correct paint job.

Light Sport Airplanes are here and gaining market share. But there are so many companies out there that its obvious that all wont survive. This story provides a current state-of-play analysis of whose selling what airplanes and who might survive. When the FAA enacted the final rule that established the Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) category and the Sport Pilot certificate in April of 2005, the overwhelming question in the mainstream industry was: What now?Depending on who you talked to, Light Sport was: going to rejuvenate general aviation by introducing an affordable, yet regulated way for newcomers to learn how to fly; offer a way for older pilots or those with borderline medical issues a way to extend their years in the left seat; clutter airports with a bunch of poorly-trained weekend warriors flying flimsy, noisy aircraft or it was simply going to die from lack of interest, like the recreational certificate.

In free markets-or so the theory goes-good products rise to the top like cream and bad products are weeded out and tossed aside to wither and die. In the real world, its messier than that, thus we have VHS instead of BetaMax, PCs dominate Macs and the overwhelming majority of airplanes have failure-prone dry vacuum pumps instead of bulletproof wet pumps. What happened here? The precise details seem to be lost to the sands of time but the short version is this: Dry pumps appeared in the mid-1960s, they were substantially cheaper than wet pumps and by the time owners realized how unreliable dry pumps were, the aircraft manufacturers had established them as the defacto standard. And because the OEMs could get away with that, the two wet pump manufacturers-Pesco and Garwin-got out of the wet pump business and eventually disappeared entirely.

Being the best at anything-whether its world class poker, table tennis or making the best headset-requires a unique combination of resources, talent, circumstance and commitment. By far, the most critical ingredient in that recipe is the last: commitment. A determined competitor who may be short of talent or competing at a disadvantage can still prevail with sheer determination and undiluted will.And so it is with some of the products we review every year. Many of these come from small companies with microscopic staffs and limited capital, but with unlimited drive to succeed. In this report, our annual Gear of the Year focus on the best products and services weve seen during the 2006/2007 editorial year; its our goal to illuminate those companies. Herewith is a bakers dozen of aviation-related products that we consider to be top drawer-the best of the best or at least the top value among like products.

Our June report on ice-based cabin coolers drew a challenge from one of the manufacturers, Swampy Cooling Systems. Shortly after our report appeared, Swampy fired off an e-mail asking if we had done our tests correctly. Swampys Jack Stich told us the companys own tests and reports from customers revealed that its IM30 cooler was capable of blowing 60-degree air. (Our tests showed about 70 degrees.)

Garmin WAAS products are exciting, but their pricing and restrictive install rules are not! I was quoted $12,000 to install a WAAS GPS in my aircraft, plus another $1000 to make the Shadin fuel computer work with the 400W. Please publish reviews of the Garmin WAAS products and also tell us if anyone else-Honeywell, for example-will offer competitive products. For now, Im going to use my NMS 2001 and my GPSmap396 as usual and go 30 miles extra to the nearest ILS with ALS and a 150-foot wide runway when the weather is down.

Several pilots we know actually, many pilots we know obsess about the threat of mid-air collisions. Yet as an overall accident cause, mid-airs rate near the bottom of the also-ran category. In the overall scheme of things, its hard to find them in the statistical noise level.Nonetheless, if mid-airs are among your personal demons, youre probably a customer for a traffic avoidance device of some sort and the market has provided, albeit not at prices the freckled-neck masses can afford.

The standard sun visors found in most older airplanes find their design origins in cars from the 1950s. They just don’t cut it when youre boring into the setting sun on a westerly heading. These older visors get the sun out of your eyes, but they also block your view of any traffic or obstacles you clearly want to avoid.

In the world of avionics, we learned long ago that most projects arent nearly as easy and inexpensive as initially anticipated. If your shop or the avionics vendor says, “easy job, no sweat,” count on the invoice being higher than you thought it would be. This is definitely proving to be true with the long-awaited WAAS upgrade for Garmin GNS430 and GNS530 navigators. Make no mistake, the $1500 upgrade Garmin promised entails a major overhaul of these boxes and delivers lots for the money.

When the temperature dips into the low 20s, everyone we know seems to agree that preheating an engine before starting is a good idea. From that point forward, however, opinions diverge. How much preheat is enough? How long should you run it? Is an electric system better than a propane blower?

Automotive quality guru Sandy Munro once told me that airplane manufacturing was about the goofiest thing he had ever seen in his professional life. On a visit to a major airframer, he said he was shocked to see the “whole damn thing built with a -inch drill and a screwdriver.”