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Do Ask, Do Tell
Coy Jacobs article in the July issue titled Good Jugs, Bad Jugs was very informative. But I was concerned about your comment made in the box titled The 10-minute Cylinder Inspection. You said that disassembling a cylinder may be the best argument weve heard for don’t ask, don’t tell, with regard to not logging the disassembly to avoid warranty problems with the supplier.

This statement is totally against FAA regulations, (FAR 43.9) which I am sure you are we’ll aware of. I realize you are trying to help pilots and aircraft owners to be better and safer, but to ask them to blatantly ignore the regulations doesnt help, especially when FAA violates them…

When last we surveyed computer flight planners three years ago-an eon in the software business- Destination Direct was the clear winner. But none of the major programs could be relied upon to provide hands off, reliable full route planning for IFR.

Things have since changed radically. Today, there is no overall winner in our view, which means selecting a planner boils down to slogging through the details, which weve tried to do for you in this report, space limitations notwithstanding.

For PC users, The Big Three-Destination Direct, FliteStar and Flitesoft-have basic features in common and the wide disparity in features which existed three years ago has closed significantly. As…

Not so long ago-in the days when the comm blared over a cabin speaker cranked up somewhere above the threshold of pain-no one cared about audio quality. Heck, if you could understand the words, what more did you need?

Headsets have changed that. Everyone wears them and like everyone else, were bothered when an airplane checks onto a busy ATC sector with scratchy or fuzzy audio. How can you tell if an airplane has a poor audio system? Listen to one with good audio.

And believe us, there’s plenty of good audio out there in the form of state-of-the-art navcomms and, recently, intense competition in the audio panels that tie all this stuff together. In days of yore, an audio panel was…

Homebuilt airplanes have found fans among pilots seeking the speed, utility and rakish good looks that, until recently, the average spam can couldnt provide. (Okay, so the Lancair Columbia still isn’t a spam can and certainly isn’t average.)

With most new aircraft production limited to mere refinements of old designs, sporty new styles have an undeniable appeal. Many buyers-notably those with more money than time-are turning to completed homebuilts instead of new or used certified aircraft when putting their offers on the table.

But homebuilt airplanes are licensed as experimental by the FAA for a reason. The only scrutiny the designs face is from the marketplace. A design that bu…

Why No 210?
Im writing to ask why the first two model years of the Cessna 210 were not included in the June 1999 Retract Step Ups article. Many of the 1960 and 1961 210s out there can be had for under $50,000 in very good condition.

The airplanes have the IO-470E producing 260 HP (1500-hour TBO) and will routinely cruise at 160 knots while burning between 12 and 14 GPH. Or you can go economically and do 140 knots on 9 to 11 GPH. The 1960 model had only 55 gallons usable, but in 1961 they upped it to 74 gallons.

The only ugly part of the 1960-1 models is the need to replace the gear saddles every 1000 hours, but the gear works flawlessly if looked after well. The powe…

[IMGCAP(1)]Although we doubt they would admit as much, the marketers of the new Columbia 300 must love other general aviation ads. What better foil for a company pitching a slick, new-age, all-composite airframe touted to be everything a Beech, Piper, Cessna or Mooney is not.

After years of complaints about nothing new in general aviation, the Columbia 300 from Lancair/Pacific Aviation Composites (PAC) truly is refreshing, even though its not nearly as radical as the market hype might suggest.

Our view is that if this model is successful-and we think it has genuine promise- because conceptually, its only a little bit new, goes a little bit faster and costs less than the standard is…

Competition is a marvelous thing.

In theory, it pushes prices down and drives unworthy products from the market, allowing the best to rise to the top like rich cream in a pitcher of fresh milk.

The theory generally works, but for the unfortunate intrusion of marketing and advertising, which tend to smear the truth in ways rarely beneficial to customers. Thats where Aviation Consumer comes in.

As professional shoppers not beholden to any advertisers, we examine the claims and counter claims in the harsh light of reality and make buying recommendations with only reader interests in mind. If we step on a few toes along the way, so be it.

Our forays into the world of aviation…

Lucky indeed are airline captains when it comes to storm avoidance. Theyve got a multi-thousand dollar radar system with a dish the size of a manhole cover and an earnest young first officer to twiddle the tilt knob and suggest deviations.

And there will be no arguments about which is better-Stormscope or radar-because airliners don’t have Stormscopes. They rely exclusively (well, almost) on radar to skirt nasty weather. So if the airlines use radar to the exclusion of sferics gear, it must be far better, right?

Well, maybe yes, if you happen to be sporting around in a Boeing or a Micky-D with a big antenna spewing out enough microwave energy to bake a potato five miles downrange….

ISO and Quality
In reference to the letter in the September issue by Carter Boswell about ISO 9000 certification: My company deals with over 100 different vendors per year, some of which are ISO certified.

We find no correlation between ISO and non-ISO companies with regard to the quality of goods or services provided. In fact, one of the large, well-known courier companies that we used to deal with was ISO certified and was our worst vendor by far.

Effective QC does not come about by filling out more paperwork. It comes from people doing the work who actually care about their work and the satisfaction of their customers.

ISO does provide a good checklist of what sh…

GPS Costs
I have a question about GPSs that I was hoping the staff at Aviation Consumer could help with. Ive been looking at handhelds and wondering why the aviation models are so much more expensive than the similar sports models. The Garmin GPS III, for instance, sells at the sporting goods stores for around $300, while the GPS III Pilot is in the $650 to $700 range.

In reading through the documentation, the only difference Ive seen is that the aviation models accept Jeppesen databases and allow for database updates, while the geographic databases in the sports models are not changeable.

Which brings me to my second question. Do you have any experience with add-on s…

Were not sure if GPS moving maps in living color top every pilots wish list. But wanted or not, here they come. In the panel-mount world, color maps are somewhat old hat, with impressive models from ARNAV, Avidyne, Argus and, recently, Garmin.

At $7000 to start, however, none of those products are exactly the sort of must-have or impulse purchases that drove the handheld market into a pitched frenzy four years ago. Inevitably, color displays had to find their way into portable maps and the first serious entry comes from AlliedSignal in the form of the Brit-designed Skyforce Skymap and Tracker.

Skyforce has been around for a while, marketing mono and color moving map GPS units in…

Six Place Step-Up
I continue to be amazed by all I have read concerning the difficulty of flying T-tailed Pipers, particularly the Turbo Lance.

I bought a 1979 Turbo Lance the day after my private checkride with fewer than 60 hours in 172s. By the third landing, I was proficient. The statement that on the T-tailed aircraft: Nothing happens until 80 knots when, whoop, the stabilator comes alive is patently false. Anyone who cannot fly these airplanes after a little practice is simply sloppy.

Mike Rapoport
via e-mail

Not all T-tail owners agree with that point of view. We don’t either, having experienced the T-tail Lances occasionally odd runway…