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(SUMMARY) It s just a sad fact that a wear item could have a replacement price tag up to a third of the value of your aircraft. That s the way it is with engines, yet most owners accept this and worry more about surviving the engine-change experience with a reliable motor that will last rather than finding th...
(SUMMARY) Of age mellows people, the same thing might be said of airplanes, at least if the airplane in question is Mooney s 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 didn t get the M20K s turboch...
(SUMMARY) In February 1996, the FAA s Technical Standard Order (TSO) C129 put IFR GPS navigation on the map. It was a complex installation with equipment that was quirky to program, but early adopters gained GPS-direct flight plans and GPS approaches even though GPS was "supplementary navigation." Today s IFR...
(SUMMARY) Call us overly picky, but we have yet to find a digital approach-plate solution we can completely endorse. Perhaps the problem is that they have yet to surpass the bar. That is, they re almost as good as paper when what we really want is something better than paper. In fairness, the e-reader solutio...
(SUMMARY) Compared to piston aviation fuels research, mushroom farming is a daylight operation. That s not to say the fuel work is secretive, it s just that it goes on more or less constantly, but nothing meaningful seems to come of it. At least you can have the mushrooms on your salad. Against this backdrop...
(SUMMARY) The term "product support" means different things to different people. For example, someone in the market to buy a new aircraft may worry about whether the local FBO has personnel trained to maintain it. Meanwhile, a renter pilot buying a new headset wonders what will happen if an earcup cracks five...
(SUMMARY) For the established manufacturers, the light sport evolution has presented an opportunity and a dilemma. The opportunity is that LSAs might gin up the market for certified aircraft by offering buyers a low cost of admission. The dilemma? How to capitalize on that. Do you leave LSAs to the upstarts o...
(SUMMARY) In a 2007 study going back more than 50 years, a Boeing safety group identified inflight loss of control as the number one source of airline fatalities. The 2008 Nall Report tells a similar story for general aviation. Loss of control inflight, or LOC-I in the argot of those who study aircraft accide...
(SUMMARY) Only 10 years ago, the idea of a certificated, "plastic" airplane had many old-timers shaking their heads in skepticism. It looks kind of interesting, but no "real" pilot would want of those things it s got a parachute, fergawd s sake! Today, the Cirrus SR20 and especially its big brother, the SR22...
(SUMMARY) Think of it: If you had an aircraft engine that burned two to three gallons less than the competition, delivered the same horsepower, weighed more or less the same and burned fuel that isn t threatened with extinction, as 100LL is, wouldn t you sell the hell out of it? You d think so. But while SMA,...
(SUMMARY) Portable GPS devices are arguably the most useful cockpit tool since the invention of the E6B. Or aeronautical charts. So it was no surprise when our reader survey on portable GPS generated well over 1000 responses. There were comments from pilots still flying trusty, monochrome Magellans to ones us...
(SUMMARY) It was close to midnight and after a long day of flying we were cooked. A couple miles out something just didn t look right. If not for the landing light reflecting off the trees, we might not be here to review cockpit lighting upgrades. The instrument-panel lighting in that 70s-vintage Arrow was so...
(SUMMARY) We can imagine only three reactions to the phrase, "there s an app for that." One, utter puzzlement because you re clueless about apps, two, you recoil in disgust against the overblown preciousness of Apple s iPhone or, last, "yeah, I ve seen it." Apps are, of course, modest little single-purpose pr...
(SUMMARY) Owners buying engine overhauls have more or less adjusted to the idea that cylinders, cams and crankshafts have become a crap shoot. But valve lifters, too? These got added to the list of problem parts last fall when TCM announced that a massive batch of faulty lifters made it into the supply chain....
(SUMMARY) We asked Dan Barks, Business Director for GA Operators and Dealers at Honeywell, why this was a good time for Honeywell to offer an aftermarket PFD. His response: "Honeywell has been refocusing on GA with the Bendix-King line. We have stack avionics, portables, but the missing product was a PFD." Th...
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