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Mapcomm Morass
Your recent article on color map navcomms is a bit nutty. Youd think that pilots are having lots of difficulty with failed radios and with getting lost. I doubt that these are even on the pilot-killing top-ten list.

The attitude gyro is a much more important and deadly problem. The Bonanza panel you show would never be the choice of a pilot who had lots of simulator experience with failed gyros and night IFR experience. Whats wrong?

The nav and com frequencies and setting knobs on the Apollo and GNS 430 are way too small to see and use.

The moving maps are too far out of the sight line and too small to be useful on an approach. The giant turn co…

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For a couple of years before the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 (GARA) was enacted, almost every alphabet group involved in general aviation was beating the drum pushing for its passage.

Essential, we were told, as a means of keeping the greedy lawyers at bay while opening the doors for a new golden age of GA with more than 2000 new piston aircraft a year being promised by Cessna alone.

And so Congress passed GARA and the President signed it. The law of the land now generally cuts off the airframe and component manufacturers liability tail, meaning they cant be sued for personal injuries or death caused to GA aircraft occupants beyond 18 years fr…

[IMGCAP(1)]Far be it for us to become too bubbly about the ongoing recovery in general aviation. Yet even seen through the eyes of the professional skeptic, the current GA economy can genuinely be described as encouraging.

New aircraft sales are up; used airplane sales remain brisk, with some models in short supply and the parade of new products-especially avionics-grows ever more impressive.

Yup, there’s a lot of stuff out there being hawked to the pilot market, most of it good, some of it not. Since our bread and butter is product review, we set aside a few pages each year for a summary of the best products and services weve reviewed or encountered during the previous 12 months….

[IMGCAP(1)]Does the oil you dump into your engine really matter that much? Some owners swear Aeroshell is the best oil going while others wont touch the stuff, preferring Phillips well-regarded XC.

Lacking any valid side-by-side wear data across a range of engine types, no one can really say which is best, although some engine shops are willing to try. Our view is that the way an engine is operated probably has more to do with engine longevity than the type of oil used.

And like most owners, weve tended to assume that the aircraft engine oil market is far too small to justify serious research into improved products.

We assumed wrong. Last spring, oil giant ExxonMobil announced…

[IMGCAP(1)]Which will it be, a heavy single or a light twin?

Our guess is this question is being asked more often than ever as the Baby Boom pilot population matures and many owners find themselves financially able to even consider the choice.

But the fact is, airplane ownership has always been a step-up game. Start out simple and cheap-a Cessna 172 or Archer-and move up to something sleek and fast.

Eventually, most owners advancing through the ranks will confront the dilemma of whether to step up to a twin from a high-performance single. And this is indeed a dilemma.

Performance and load-carrying of most twins is better than the big singles and thanks to escalating gas prices,…

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Although long since outclassed by generations of faster, sleeker airplanes, nothing quite symbolizes general aviation like a yellow Piper Cub.

To this day, the general public often thinks of all small airplanes as Piper Cubs, despite the fact that these airplanes are, in reality, a relative rarity at many big city airports. And if they are there, theyre likely hangared and kept pristine by owners who consider their J-3 a flying pride and joy.

The venerable Cub was the first airplane to bring general aviation to the masses and it continues to enjoy somewhat of a revival, as new pilots brought up on the mundane handling of nosewheel trainers discover the pure fun of stick…

[IMGCAP(1)]A scene from real-life at Oshkosh: Midday on a breezy Wednesday afternoon, the cavernous Raytheon/Beechcraft tent is deserted, with not so much as a straw hat or logod golf shirt in sight. No tire kickers, either.

From the looks of it, everyone is gawking at the mock-up of the new Eclipse personal jet, in a pavilion hard by Raytheons lot. A cynical journalist cant resist drawing this to the attention of a Raytheon PR person. Youll have to excuse us, says the flack, Were out building and delivering airplanes.

And so the line is drawn between the Jurassic has beens of the piston era and the would-be Walter Beeches of the new millennium, who propose to make 300-knot…

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In the world of GPS equipage, weve noticed an interesting trend lately. For want of a better term, we’ll call it the have and have-not syndrome.

The haves are buying up Garmin GNS 430s as fast as Garmin can make them while the have-nots are eyeing all the hand-me-down GPS boxes many of these owners are dumping to accommodate new gear.

Given the volume Garmin is enjoying with GNS 430, this is a somewhat unprecedented development in the recent history of avionics. Some of these GPS navigators were installed less than two years ago and although their owners consider them obsolete, the fact is, these units are serviceable, if somewhat poor in features compared to the newer…

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Are you $%@#%# guys living on the same planet as I am?

Were happy to say we don’t hear this sort of thing from readers often but when we do, its usually because some product or service weve recommended hasnt worked out the way we were sure it would.

Welcome to the real world of variable perceptions, where the term satisfaction is a moving target and what one aircraft owner considers good service and a swell deal, another considers the bum steer of a lifetime.

If there’s any constant truth in buying aviation products and services, its this: Even the best of service shops, those with sterling national reputations, arent capable of satisfying everyone everytime…

In dusty corners of tee hangars all over this great land are the corroded remains of a variety of pilot toys-engine pre-heaters too complex to bother using, personal ramp tugs that couldnt pull a cork out of a Cabernet, desktop kneeboards from the 30-seconds-over-Tokyo phase of our flying and the like.

More common than any other discarded artifact are the bones of portable conveyances designed to get pilots from airports to motels, beaches, appointments and assignations without recourse to rental cars or taxis. Folding bikes, motorized skateboards, model-airplane-engined Schwinns, collapsible mopeds, inflatable ATVs…well, maybe not inflatable ATVs, but certain…

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Jeppesens vision of the future is a paperless cockpit, a vision that has, thus far, eluded most pilots and owners we know.

Nonetheless, as one step on the road to this future, Jeppesen will soon release a new product called the Skybound Datawriter, which will make it possible to electronically transmit monthly updates from your computer directly to the datacard that fits into your GPS.

Its designed as an alternative to the present system of receiving new data cards by mail every 28 days. Datawriter users will have two options: New updates can be mailed on a CD every four weeks or they can be downloaded from Jeppesens Web site.

Jeppesen plans full release of th…

[IMGCAP(1)]Owning a New Piper Mirage has proven a bittersweet experience for many pilots. While the airplane is a comfortable, high-flying cruiser, its complex and has a reputation for being needy of maintenance.

Even at that, however, Mirage owners were recently treated to some disturbing news that has both New Piper and Lycoming looking for improvements, although both dispute the results of a recent survey indicating poor engine reliability in Mirages.

In the meantime, a Dallas Mirage owner filed a $75 million class action lawsuit against New Piper in late September, claiming that New Piper and Lycoming knew of the Mirages engine problems for years but did nothing to correct the…