The first iterations of Fltplan.com had a clunky, Web 0.5 interface, but it was fast, flight plan filing was reliable and it sported a couple of unique features, such as seeing recently-assigned ATC routing between the airports. It quickly became a favorite of corporate flight departments and freight dogs. The user interface has improved (somewhat). While it still caters somewhat to the corporate flight world, we think Fltplan.com is the best all-in-one website to create and file a flight plan and grab FAA-legal weather. To really use the website, you’ll need to create a (free) login name, and appropriate aircraft and pilot profiles. This is a quick process where you can select from a long list of existing aircraft profiles or customize your own. With that done, you can either create a quick airport-to-airport plan or enter something with custom routing. Seeing recent ATC routes is a great plus, but if youre traveling far you’ll likely see jet routes rather than Victor airways. Once youve built a quick plan, you can see headwind/tailwind factors and times at different altitudes. That data also appears in a nav log if you print one, so you can refigure times we’ll if your planned altitude doesnt work out in the real world. Additional slick features include tight integration with departure and approach charts, a Takeoff and Landing Data (TOLD) card, a system to fax the destination FBO directly and a well-organized weather page. Flight plans can also be saved in a format for upload into your G1000 or GNS 430. The site will also do flight tracking and offers some fee-based services such as eAPIS filings.

Back when this whole LSA thing was being conceived, part of the appeal was simplicity: Two seats, fixed-pitch prop, a couple instruments … what could go wrong? Actually, a lot can go wrong, break or just plumb wear out. So-called legacy LSAs can have over half a century on their airframes. Corrosion and fatigue mean just about anything can snap. For a Piper J-3, thats no problem. You could literally build a J-3 from scratch with available replacement parts. For an Aeronca C-3, your options are limited. Flying a new light sport (S-LSA) doesnt guarantee parts and support will be simple. Your experience will almost entirely depend on how the company built the aircraft, how we’ll they prepared for maintenance and how long they stay in business. Old or new, the first step in protecting yourself is understanding why LSA maintenance is different and knowing what questions to ask before you buy. Supportability for legacy LSAs is primarily a numbers game. If enough airframes of a particular are model flying, then its probably worth someones trouble to supply parts. Thats what makes models like the Piper J-3 (Cub) and PA-11 (Cub Special), or the Aeronca 7AC (Champ) and 11AC (Chief) good picks.

Its almost a truism that aircraft performance numbers are a smoke-and-mirrors act where best-case scenarios are pushed forward as simple facts. Looking at the numbers we have to remind ourselves that real-world compromises-no, you cant fill the tanks and the seats-are kept off the table. Were beginning to smell the distinct aroma of aviation optimism, spiked with a twist of marketing, in the new arena of electric aircraft. With an opportunity for those potential buyers to put deposits down on kits or power systems within the next 12 months, its time to take a close look at where this new industry stands. Electric flight in enclosed light airplanes is practical with todays technology. Yuneec International and Electric Aircraft have both flown proof-of-concept aircraft on battery power for dozens of hours. Sonex has a couple of years invested in systems development. None of these companies have hit the two-person, two-hour, 85 MPH mark, but they are close enough that we can believe its within the grasp of incremental improvement. The bad news is that we have no solid way to benchmark these designs. This is a new arena where we can only make educated guesses.

Bendix-King (by Honeywell) has been making an aggressive bid to reestablish itself as a market leader in avionics. Last year their AV8OR handheld staked a firm hold on the low-end portable GPS market. Now their AV8OR Ace is taking a swipe at the high end currently occupied by the Garmin GPSMAP 496 and 696, as we’ll as Tablet PC-based Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs) like ChartCase. At 1.25 pounds and slightly less than eight by five inches, the Aces size is just about right for the cockpit. We found it easy to mount with a window suction cup or yoke mount in a couple of aircraft without it blocking any critical items. Its also light and small enough to comfortably hold in your hand or lap. The screen is seven inches diagonally, and is touch sensitive. Much of the Aces software is driven by on-screen buttons that appear when you touch the screen and disappear after a user-defined time. This keeps the interface clean and context-sensitive for easy use (with one caveat, see below). There are hard keys along one side of the unit for direct navigation, zooming in and out, cycling through the main viewing screens and getting to the top-level menu.

People who fly tend to be a bit cultish. We can remain devoted to products we love for the one redeeming value while tolerating the abuse of 100 failings. Were fans. Thats a plus if youre talking new technology. When the real-world operating experience of the Thielert-powered DA42 turned nightmarish, there was outcry and backlash-but there were still devotees. Granted, outside avgas enclaves like the U.S., customers will put up with quite a bit to burn diesel. For some its go diesel or go bankrupt, sooner or later.Diamond Aircraft is now staking a hefty piece of the bank that they can win back and gain fans by reinventing the aerodiesel on their own as the Austro. The Austro is not a shined-up Thielert (now Centurion) engine. Its built on the same bones, but its construction is beefier. Aviaton Consumers editor, Paul Bertorelli spent some time poking around that engine at the Diamond factory in London, Ontario. His impression is that that Austro believes that Thielert modified the original Mercedes block, head and injection system in ways that reduced durability. Modern, over-the-road diesel engines have head bolts as big as your fist a for a reason. Diesels pound the hell out of themselves and everything theyre attached to. Heavy structure isn’t an option you can skimp on.

Options for digital plates abound, so long as you want government charts. Jepp users have been stuck with Jeppesens own JeppView system, which works on heavy and often cumbersome laptop computers and some EFBs. In our view (and in the opinion of several line pilots we know), JeppView has some user interface issues that make it less than ideal. It also does more than simply display charts, which is more than some folks want. Once you have the FXview running, selecting and organizing charts is about as self-explanatory as possible. There are seven tabs across the top of the screen. Each tab can hold the charts for one airport, except the right-most tab, which is a clipboard. More on that in a moment. To load an airport, you tap a large “Find Airport” icon. You can tap in the ICAO identifier or any part of the airport name or town name. The FX10 narrows down the list as you type. The display is slow to update, but you don’t have to wait after tapping each letter. Tap out the whole string at full speed and wait about two seconds, and the FX10 will catch up and show the results. Once youve loaded an airport, you can check its name to make it a favorite. The list of favorites also appears on the search page for faster access.

For many of us, the mention of a repo man may conjure images of Emilio Estevez hunting down a 64 Chevy Malibu with aliens in the trunk. But the sad truth is that repossessions happen on aircraft just the way they do on any other vehicle bought on credit. There’s a common misconception that these aircraft go back to the manufacturer. They don’t. They go to the bank that financed the sale and now has an aircraft owner defaulting on their loan. Thats a sad day for the owner, but, perhaps, an opportunity for you-if you want a light Cessna or a Bell helicopter. Banks (or finance corporations) don’t want to own aircraft. So much so that our sources tell us they will do almost anything to work with the buyer to avoid taking the aircraft. But it does happen (perhaps more so these days) so there are systems in place to try and recoup some of the loss. For most major finance outlets, that means the repod aircraft goes to a dealer who then resells it. It turns out the right to do this is highly prized and closely guarded information among aircraft dealers. We tried to find out where youd be likely to find a repo Diamond or Cirrus and had only limited success-and where we did have success it was as off-the-record information only.

Amphibious LSAs are like a cold ice cream cone on a hot summer day: Nobody really needs one, but once youve had a taste, you really, really want one. But practicality is a matter of perspective. Having the option to drop in on a lake or river and pull up to the local fish shack for lunch makes for some serious recreation. Having the option to use most any airport for, hangaring, refueling or maintenance is seriously convenient. Youll pay for that flexibility with a slower cruise and some added complexity of retractable gear. Hey, you cant have everything. Kerry Richter, president of Progressive Aerodyne, started building hang gliders in high school and was working on ultralights by the late 70s. The first Searey (known as the A model) was available as a kit in 1992, with the B and C models following in 1996 and 2002. The latest model is the Searey LSX / Sport. The LSX is the kit version. The Sport is a ready-to-fly S-LSA. The Searey still looks a bit like an ultralight, in our opinion. This image is dispelled once you get your hands on the aircraft. Aileron, elevator and flap controls are all pushrod and torque tube. Many of the connections are exposed for easy preflight. The wing is cloth over aluminum for weight savings, and ease of detailed inspection and repair should you run it into a dock piling. Other nice pluses are standard LED lights and an electric bilge pump. We liked the heavy switches and clean panel layout. It even has cabin heat, despite the distance to the engine.

At a Wall Street analysts forum in 2007, the CEO of Ballistic Recovery Systems, Larry Williams, told the audience why he thought the all-plane parachute made sense: “In 2005, there were just over 1600 [accidents] involving general aviation airplanes in this country that resulted in 556 deaths. Now, if you offset that with the fact that were saving 199 people, all of the sudden, parachutes start to make sense.” Except that its not that simple. As of this writing, BRS has claimed to having saved 233 lives, but thats counting every occupant on every successful parachute deployment as a saved life. A quick look at the record shows that death was far from a certainty in many of the parachute deployments. A subtler knot in the logic that BRS has saved 233 people is that having a parachute installed affects the delicate balance of risk versus utility in aircraft. We know from experience and interviews that there are pilots who will take on conditions such as rough weather with the chute that they wouldnt take on otherwise. We can only guess that some of the CFIT accidents in the Cirrus were influenced by the faulty assumption that the pilot will always have enough time to pop the bddn chute before auguring in. But the risk equation is more complex than that. Situations such as single-engine at night over mountains or low-visibility takeoffs are risky only because the consequences of an emergency are high, even though the likelihood of failure is extremely low. Having an ace-in-the-hole to cover that unlikely event will shift the go/no-go call for some pilots. We believe those pilots will get more out of their airplane with a negligible increase in real risk. So BRS may be overstating its positive impact on lifesaving, but also understating its positive impact on aircraft utility.

If you find the idea of looking over a controllers shoulder to watch traffic fills you with glee, weve got the product for you. RadarBox is a two-part system. You get a receiver that picks up 1090ES and Mode S transmissions from aircraft and sends it to your computer via USB, where it feeds the RadarBox software. Data for the planes your box sees is also sent back to the RadarBox servers, and thats where things get interesting. The server collects data from RadarBox users worldwide and makes this data available to you. RadarBox has over 2000 users worldwide, so that can average over 900 flights visible around the globe. Of course, you can limit the number viewed by proximity to you, airline, flight status and more. In fact, the number of options for viewing the data on top-down maps and tables of information is almost daunting.

When Aspen Avionics announced its retrofit PFD system in 2007, we were impressed with the designs ingenuity and its workable price point. A year later, they were shipping and the field results were mixed: Capable technology but the installations werent going as smoothly as hoped and there was a higher-than-expected failure rate.New technology always takes some time to shake out the bugs, so now that there are hundreds of units out there in the field, we surveyed users to see if the reality is living up to the marketing copy. The short answer is: The Aspen Evolution system is generally performing as advertised. There are notable exceptions, but they seem to be clustered in the earlier installs, which is the trend we want to see. As we expected when we reviewed the Evolution system a year ago, the EFD1000 Pro version is the market favorite, with 95 percent of the respondents choosing that system. The EFD1000 Pro and supporting hardware is $9995. Thats $4000 more than the entry-level EFD1000 Pilot, but the Pilot cant interface with navigation radios or GPS.Price was the decider two to one over the next most popular reason for choosing the Aspen system. The system is approved for over 650 aircraft, but we saw the vast majority in medium- to high-performance piston singles. In several cases, part of the motivator was the cost of the alternative. As one Bonanza owner put it, “It just made sense. My Bendix/King HSI was giving me problems. The cost to overhaul and reinstall the 25-year-old HSI system was probably half of what this new system was going to be, with hoped-for increases in reliability and duplication of attitude information.”

Sometimes the important thing is not what you say, but how you say it. Thats the secret behind Jepps new VFR+GPS charts. Its not that the information is that different than what you get from a sectional chart, but its in a form that makes it much easier to use. Forget the “VFR+GPS” title. While there is some GPS-specific data such as lat-long info for commonly-used reporting points, these charts are really replacements for your Sectional and Terminal-Area charts. Years of flying with looking at muted greens and browns make the first glance at these charts a bit jarring. Theyre much higher contrast and use a wider range of color. But that color is applied for maximum effect. The background color for terrain is much lighter than government charts. This makes all the text easier to read. In place of the faint minimum elevation figures (MEFs) on sectional charts that provide 100-300 feet of obstacle clearance for each quadrangle, the Jepp charts publish a Minimum Grid Area Altitudes that represent 1000 or 2000 feet above terrain and obstacles. The numbers are in red, so there’s no missing them whether youre planning on flying airways or GPS direct. Busy airspace is where the information density of charts is highest, and where keeping all that data readable is most important. The new charts shine here in several subtle ways. Class B and C airspace boundaries have their altitudes written on the border lines where its easy to find and mentally connect to the area in question rather than floating in the middle of that area. Frequencies for approaching these airspaces also appear clearly on the chart, as we’ll as in a black and white table on the back of the chart. Visual waypoints, common GPS fixes and even interstate highways are marked on the chart, so when the Tower asks you to report crossing I-70, you can do so with some confidence.