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Thats not surprising since avionics repairs and exchanges for both brands are sourced domestically-Garmin is in Olathe, Kansas, and Dynon is in Woodinville, Washington. Only one LSA operator we talked with dinged Garmin for its support performance, which is unusual, based on our experience. It had to do with a failed portable navigator being used as the primary display in the panel of an older Flight Design CT. Since it was in reality a portable unit, the failed device wasnt given priority replacement status because Garmin doesnt consider portable units primary gear. But that was before Garmin assembled its Team X dedicated LSA avionics engineering and support division-a dominent commitment to the LSA market-that hasnt gone unnoticed by any LSA maker we talked with.

Pipistrels early-to-the-finish line Alpha Electro may be the first commercially viable e-airplane, but there are other projects on the developmental horizon. Judging their technical merit is an academic exercise, but the companies pursuing them obviously believe there’s a future in electrics, so these are worth a mention here.

Avidyne once had a glass and bezel refurbishment add-on for its AeroPlan extended warranty, but it says that glass and bezel restoration coverage is now excluded from all Avidyne warranty plans. In fact, even if you do send a unit in for warranty repair, Avidyne will likely charge an additional fee to replace the bezel glass.

Heres a valuable lesson one pilot learned the hard way: commercial-grade glass cleaners and avionics display lenses are an expensive combination.Of course, if he read the pilots guide for the new Aspen, Garmin and Avidyne flight displays installed in his panel, he would have left the Windex at home.But there are several new products on the market which claim to safely clean and protect avionics and tablet displays. Are they safe? To find out, we put some serious money on the line and gave them a try. We also asked manufacturers for official guidance on cleaning displays.

Our scan of the last 100 Mooney 231 accidents revealed 22 engine power loss events-slightly over half of which were due to something being installed improperly. In most of the remainder, the cause could not be determined.

If age mellows people, the same might be said for airplanes, at least if the airplane in question is Mooneys M20K series. The airplane arrived in the GA market at a time when turbocharging was relatively new and the demand for high-flying aircraft was thin.Mooney didnt get the M20Ks turbocharging system right on the first try and the airplane developed a reputation as a maintenance hog. Thirty years later, that reputation has been mostly burnished and the fact that the M20K bores along between 160 and 200 knots on relatively little fuel has improved the models used price.

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I never made a landing in rain until after I had my private pilot ticket-Id never even thought about what it would be like flying final at 60 knots while peering through a fuzzy windshield, trying to sort out lining up with the runway and the flare. My first landing in rain (light) wasnt fun. Not having a windshield wiper didnt make sense. As I gained experience, I sort of figured out how to deal with rain on the windshield when landing, but the results often werent pretty.

Are you flippin kidding me? Thats the family-safe version of my response when a shop wouldnt install a Whelen PAR36 Parmetheus drop-in LED in a readers airplane without first lobbying FAA field approval. The aircraft, a first-gen Cirrus SR22, has a traditional incandescent landing/taxi lamp mounted in the nose bowl. Replacing it with the Whelen drop-in is a matter of accessing the lamp, unscrewing it from the mount, pulling off the connector and installing the new LED lamp in reverse order. Even a caveman could do that.

Anyone perusing the lighting aisle at the local Home Depot will have noticed that the lowly incandescent bulb is an endangered species, having been displaced by LEDs and CFLs. The burgeoning LED market has spilled over into aviation in the form of landing, taxi and recognition lights. (Thankfully, weve been spared the CFLs.)Add to this the availability of another light technology, HIDs, and owners have more choice than ever in upgrading over the ancient GE tractor bulb thats illuminated runways for decades. Never mind that this new technology costs 10 to 100 times more than an off-the-shelf GE 4509, how does it perform?Well get to that in this article, but first note that the lighting market has expanded since we last examined the topic six years ago. There are more choices in HID and LED and more approved systems. In some cases, prices appear to have decreased, a welcome exception to everything else in aviation.

In keeping with its cutting-edge ethos, Pipistrel has two ambitious electric-flight projects in the works. We covered the Panthera electric/hybrid project in the July 2014 Aviation Consumer and last fall, the company announced an electric version of the Alpha.

The notion that a basic training aircraft should be light, cheap and small has been dented by the advent of the 400 kilobuck Cessna 172, which is none of those things. But one of the companies that hasnt abandoned the minimalist trainer idea is Pipistrel, the innovative Slovenian aircraft maker that continues to plumb the bleeding edge of aero tech with new designs, one of which is the Alpha Trainer we’ll look at in this review. An electric version may appear this year.