Search Results for: insurance

Dr. Clayton Cowl, chair of the Preventive, Occupational and Aerospace Medicine division, told us the department sees roughly 1800 patients per year, some with the most complex medical certification cases that you can imagine. According to Cowl, in all but a dozen or so cases spread out over 20 years the clinic was able to return those pilots to the flight line. As for the patients that the clinic couldn’t get certified, they simply shouldn’t be flying anyway, Cowl told us.

But the airplane did have some disadvantages that might be significant to buyers who are eyeballing remaining Columbias on the current used market. Although both the Columbia 300 and earlier SR22s have identical empty and maximum gross takeoff weights, according to the Aircraft Bluebook the 300 gives up 150 pounds in full-fuel payload to the SR22, because its tanks are larger. It’s a little more sensitive in loading, too, and perhaps a deal-breaker for some-it lacks the Cirrus’ airframe parachute system.

• ASPEN’S NEW ES PFD
• INSURANCE MARKET
• GLOBALSTAR SAT-FI2
• MAYO CLINIC MEDICALS
• SO LONG, 121.5 ELTs
• USED COLUMBIA 300/350

The Cessna 337 Skymaster is arguably the most commercially successful so-called push-pull attempt, at least in terms of numbers built. And although the 337 Skymaster isn’t the most popular twin ever marketed, it’s done just fine for itself and has achieved its primary goal: eliminating asymmetric thrust and simplifying the pilot’s workload in the event of an engine out. Unfortunately, as you’ll see in our accident scan on page 30, some Skymaster pilots find plenty of other ways to NTSB fame.

Course content is broken into nine sections, each of which begins with an audiovisual presentation. The presentations-slides with a voice-over-provide an overview of the section topic and generally run between 5 and 15 minutes. There is a note-taking function available during the presentations. Each presentation is followed by a 10-question true/false study quiz, which serves as a pretty good indicator of how much studying you need to be doing on the topic. Answers are reviewed after completion with explanations presented below the questions. Section reviews emphasize terminology, which might be quite useful for a pilot who has been away from the industry for a while, but less so for someone still comfortable with pilot lingo.

The venerable Cessna 190 series was not the first business aircraft by a long shot, although it was a first for Cessna. These days, for owners wanting to own a piece of aviation history, it is probably the most practical of classics because it’s a decent people hauler. Even better, it’s not overly expensive to maintain, compared to other classics, that is. There’s no fabric, and parts are generally available unlike other classic machines including the Beech Staggerwing, Spartan Executive and Stinson Reliant.

The Aerostar is the product of famed aircraft designer Ted Smith, whose name is attached to such classics as the A-20 twin-engine bomber and the Twin and Jet Commander lines. In 1963, Smith formed his own company to build a family of fast fliers, all built around the same fuselage, wings and tail. Five years later, the Model 600 emerged in 1968, with normally aspirated Lycoming IO-540 engines and a takeoff weight of 5500 pounds. A year later, the 601 appeared, with a pair of Rajay turbochargers and manually controlled, electrically actuated wastegates on each engine. With turbos, the engines could maintain 290 HP from sea level to 16,000 feet.

You’ll find that the majority of established avionics shops are Part 145 FAA repair stations, but some might have varying ops specs. For example, some might have instrument repair and overhaul capability, plus are spec’d to work on ship’s weather radar, to name two major fields of expertise. One benefit of using a shop that maintains a Part 145 repair station is that it’s required to have a quality control program in place (including an approved quality control manual), an area in which the FAA has placed sizable emphasis mostly for the right reasons.

We’ve observed that a significant portion of the aircraft rental fleet in the country is still equipped with 121.5 MHz-only ELTs. If you’re a pilot who either has no access to an aircraft with a 406 MHz ELT or does, and wants a backup device because you recognize that an ELT may not trigger, its signal may be blocked due to the dynamics of an accident or the ELT can sink with the aircraft, what are your alternatives?

Any owner with the financial wherewithal to step into the world of aircraft with engines that go whoosh is smart enough to immediately talk the idea over with his or her insurance broker. In addition to getting a ballpark estimate for the cost to insure a used King Air, Citation Mustang or new HondaJet, one of the first things the prospective owner will hear from the broker is that any insurer is going to require upgrade training at a facility approved by the insurer.

If youre in the market for a used Piper PA-46, the good news is there are plenty of them for the taking, plus the oldest ones can be found for around $200,000. Moreover, a Malibu, Mirage or Matrix can wear a lot of hats. For pilots looking for experience in high-altitude, pressurized flying, a Malibu or Mirage is a logical step up. The unpressurized Matrix, with the same cabin as the rest of the PA-46 line, works as a comfortable people hauler with more simplicity and perhaps lower maintenance costs than its pressurized brethren.

Bad Elf also suggested that flyGarmin customers who want to use the Wombat wait until the subscription has expired and then switch to the Jeppesen JDM because the cost is nearly the same and it will allow them to use the Wombat for remote avionics data updates. Worth mentioning is that Garmins Flight Stream 510 wireless card that performs a similar function (plus a variety of other ones, including flight plan transfer and data overlay) is in the $1500 price range, compared to the $250 Wombat piston model.