What makes one product better than another? Sometimes it just works better, sometimes the company standing behind it provides better customer service and sometimes a top product simply does more for less-which is how we define that elusive quality called the best value.
As professional shoppers and product testers, our job is to sweep the market in search of the general aviation products and services that you, as an aircraft owner, need to keep your airplane flying safely and economically. Once a year, in our Gear of the Year awards, we review the best products and services weve seen recently and on these three pages, were presenting our findings for 2005.
Our reviews are famously warts-and-all trials of virtually every type of product sold for light aircraft-including the aircraft themselves. While were on the subject of warts, we have a few of our own. Were picky. Were demanding. We are unreasonably, annoyingly stingy in handing out praise and we are all but immune to the breathless, laudatory prose found elsewhere in aviation journalism. When you don’t accept commercial advertising, you can afford to be that way.
What that means is that you, the reader, paid for the words on these pages, not the companies that made the products. Therefore, these recommendations are unswayed by dinner and drinks with the marketing department or a panel full of free avionics. We therefore submit that our product choices represent solid, take-it-to-the-bank advice that you can really use.
Company of the Year:
Mooney Aircraft Company
Three years ago, any sane person would have concluded that Mooney was done as an airplane maker. With Cirrus, Lancair and Diamond dominating the market, the shops at Kerrville, Texas should have been chained shut with weeds pushing up through the crack in the taxiways.
But that didnt happen. Despite yet another bankruptcy and a crushingly competitive market, Mooney picked itself up, dusted off the financials and re-emerged as a genuine player in light aircraft general aviation.
It found the capital to quickly reestablish the workforce, reinvigorate the marketing effort and to bring its flagship product, the Ovation, into the 21st century with a Garmin glass panel. The result is that Mooney makes airplanes competitive with anything flying today. The turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing.
Weve noticed that Mooney has an aggressive sales team in place, its Web site has been re-engineered and, most important, its answering the phone and following up on sales leads and responding to press queries. Given the current market, Mooney may have some challenges ahead-as do all the manufacturers-but in our view, its presently meeting those challenges head on in a way we admire. For that reason, we have picked the Mooney Airplane Company as our 2005 company of the year and we wish them every success. (www.mooney.com.)
Best Sunshields:
Cunningham Covers
As we reported in our May 2005 issue, were baffled by owners who park their expensive airplanes on a sun-baked ramp with neither a cover nor sunshields. We cringe at the damage this does to upholstery and avionics.
Our market scan of sunshields revealed that Cunningham Aircraft Covers makes the top products. Theyre we’ll made, they fit we’ll and are moderately priced. Moreover, we have always found Cunningham to be a terrific company to deal with, delivering friendly, on-time service and products. (www.cunninghamcovers.com)
Best Lightweight Headset:
Quiet Auricomm
In our three decades of aviation product reporting, weve noted that its often the smallest companies that deliver the best products. Thats definitely true of Quiet Technologies, a small start-up that pioneered high-quality, well-engineered in-the-ear headsets that are an alternative to the bulky, noggin-squeezing designs most of us are used to.
Quiets AuriComm line has set the benchmark standard for how we’ll these featherweight products can perform and as we reported in the July 2005 issue, the company is about to release an improved design. Quiet is not new to this space, either. The AuriComm headset took top honors in our 2003 products survey as well. (www.quiettechnologies.com)
Best Datalink:
WXWORX/XM Radio
Another second-time winner in the best product sweepstakes is WxWorx, whose XM Radio-based weather datalink continues to lead what is rapidly becoming a thinned out field. XM has proven to be a reliable, robust link system and the WxWorx partnership with the broadcaster has, in our estimation, proved brilliant. If there have been any technical snags between the two companies, they have proved largely transparent to customers.
The most impressive aspect of WxWorxs success has been its development of the portable market. For a scant $1000, its possible for owners of modest aircraft-right down to ultralights-to have practical and sophisticated onboard NEXRAD weather capability. In our view, this is an enormous advance in flight safety and an impressive example of how high-technology can be made affordable to virtually the entire market. (www.wxworx.com.)