Aircraft Stepups

If youre like us, youre flying around in something built during the last century but lusting after some of the panel-mounted goodies available in newer aircraft. While its easy enough to shoehorn in a color moving map and some digital radios, modernizing other areas of your panel isn’t. And thats a shame, since much of the engine and systems instrumentation in older aircraft appears borrowed from a 1947 Buick. But, as usual, the aftermarket has provided in the form of engine monitors, fuel flow instruments and a smattering of tachometers. The tach market is not widely populated, so if you want one, the choices are somewhat limited. Heres a run-down on the pros and cons of this technology, plus a look at the major players in the field. Of course, the microprocessor in digital instruments does little more than count. Conveniently, a mechanical tachometer does the same thing. The big difference between the two involves how they receive a signal: The microprocessor counts electrical impulses sent to it via wiring, while the mechanical tachometers many moving parts count the number of times a cable attached to the engine revolves. The former is lighter, more accurate and less likely to fail, at least as long as the aircrafts electrical system powers the microprocessor. The latter is none of those things.

Pilots who fly a lot of weather sort themselves into two groups when it comes to the risk of flying in ice. One group-call them the “Im-willing-to-give-it-a-go” set will launch into any reasonable forecast and deal with the ice as it comes. The other group-call them the Legal Beagles-would do the same, but they get their pants snagged not so much on the actual risk, but whether the FAA will come after them for flying in forecast or “known ice” in an airplane not equipped for it. Great swaths of pulp forest have been sacrificed in the name of trying to define known ice and were not sure weve succeeded yet. What we have managed to do is create a not-so-small market slice of would-be buyers to whom an airplane legally equipped for known icing is a big deal. Ever sensitive to the whims of the market, Cirrus has created the perfect airplane for these buyers: The new SR22 line equipped with a TKS-based flight-into-known-ice package. In the past, weve viewed so-called FIKI packages as more window dressing than real substance. TKS is such an effective system that, in our view, with respect to actual icing outcomes, whether the system is certified or not is a distinction without a difference. To be sure, known-ice packages protect more surfaces and are probably more robust, but our view is that if 10 airplanes certified for known ice and 10 with so-called inadvertent systems flew the same winter systems for a year, there wouldnt be a noticeable difference in outcomes. So whats to improve? In the Cirrus view, that would be the highest fluid rates of any TKS system on a single and what amounts to significant design decisions that mold the Cirrus icing system into an integrated package. Conclusion: It works better, its easier to use and gives the pilot more control and more choices. Heres how.

Airplane manufacturers rarely spend time optimizing the engine compartment. Instead, they just make sure everything fits, which can result in some Byzantine exhaust pipe routing. That means exhaust gases from each cylinder travel unequal distances before being dumped overboard. Power Flow likens the resulting increased back pressure in the system to a kinked garden hose. Improve the engines ability to breathe, according to theory, and you’ll improve performance without altering anything else. This something-for-nothing phenomenon only works if the engine and its exhaust are not working at top efficiency: Some combinations of carburetors/engines/airframes may not see any benefits, according to the company. Power Flow says its header pipes from each cylinder are of equal length, so when the negative pressure following one cylinders power stroke occurs, the lower pressure helps extract the exhaust from the next cylinder. Since the length of time each exhaust pulse needs to travel from the cylinder to the collector varies with engine speed, the company has optimized its systems for 2450 RPM. At that speed, Power Flow says more of the exhaust is scavenged from the cylinder and the incoming fuel/air charges volume is greater. Early Power Flow designs were fitted with a rather ungainly pipe assembly, extending below the cowling and supported by a rod. This rod usually extends through a hole cut in the cowling during installation. Later designs use a so-called short stack, which is about the length of a stock system, eliminating the support rod. Both the original design and the optional short stack are available in either stainless steel or ceramic-coated stainless. For some applications, only the short stack is available. For a Grumman Traveler, Cheetah or Tiger, Power Flow says you’ll immediately notice a 30 to 130 RPM increase at full throttle, plus significant climb rate improvement. Similar claims exist for other engine/airframe combinations for which Power Flow offers an exhaust. (See the table at left.) Since there’s no free lunch, especially with airplanes and 100LL, more power means higher fuel burn than in an unmodified airplane. Power Flows fuel-savings claim comes from being able to cruise at the same speed as before the conversion, using less throttle and therefore less power. Many owners report their fixed-pitch propellers tended to turn too fast on takeoff or in cruise after the conversion and have re-pitched the prop, returning RPM to POH values while still seeing increased climb and cruise performance.

You know the world has changed when your financial advisor calls gushing about what a great day the market had. It lost only 300 points on moderate trading and hes certain the bottom is near. (Until, that is, investors find a way to tap yet deeper negative stratas.) In days of yore, stock market fluctuations far more benign than what weve seen since August have tended to spook airplane buyers into slamming their wallets shut. It stands to reason, then, that the current blood bath on Wall Street should have sent buyers burrowing deep underground, right? Not really, according to our recent survey of aircraft brokers we know. No one would describe the market as booming, but our interviews with brokers revealed less softness than we would have expected and, more important, there are some surprisingly good opportunities for buyers seeking deals on late-model used aircraft-prices are reasonable, inventory is high and sellers are adapting to this new reality. The world is less rosy for owners trying to sell run-of-the-mill, average airplanes, but these airplanes can still move, if the seller is willing to get the price right. (Thats another way of saying if youve got an average airframe tending toward the beater side of the spectrum, don’t expect to get a price anywhere near Bluebook value.)

Inflight icing is as hazardous as it has ever been, but it doesnt hide the same demons it once did, which is another way of saying there are fewer icing accidents than there used to be. One reason is that owners are flying less and maybe flying in less icy weather, too. But forecasting technology has improved and-maybe the big one-more airplanes than ever (especially singles) are carrying deicing equipment. And where pneumatic boots used to be the only choice, now there are two others: TKS liquid deicing and, recently, electrically heated surface deicing. Obviously, the technology has moved forward, but are the latest developments any better than the original rubber boot? The short answer is yes, but the detailed answer is that electrical deicing for light aircraft has proven disappointing. (Cessna has dropped it for the 350/400 series aircraft it acquired from Columbia.) Given these developments, which deice system is the most cost effective and least maintenance intensive? And if flight into known icing is your wont, should you buy an airplane based on which system it has?

A few minutes of roasting in the summer sun on a hot ramp will leave most any pilot wishing for air conditioning. Unfortunately, three problems stand in the way: weight, power and cost. Light aircraft AC systems have been around for some time, but recent advances in technology are making the project more reasonable. You can add AC to almost any aircraft you want via several STCs or by field approval. Expect to lose between 40 and 90 pounds of useful load and send the aircraft to the shop for north of 100 hours. But it will give a new meaning to being cool on the ramp. The trouble with AC is that compressing the refrigerant takes serious power, either directly from the engine via a driveshaft and clutch or via an electrically-powered compressor. The engine-driven option is usually used for small aircraft. They work passably on the ground at a high idle, but don’t really pack a punch until the aircraft is flying and the engine is turning faster. The compressor must fit somewhere under the cowl but you don’t need a high-output alternator.

Few pilots are going to replace all of their older lighting with new LED technology on a whim, simply because of the expense. If it is just a bulb, bulbs are cheap; hardly ever over $20, or even $100 for a strobe bulb. Its when other components start to fail that changing to LEDs becomes an option. Corrosion and simple age ruin bulb fixtures, sockets, connections and power packs on strobes. The flashers on Cessnas are a particular bugaboo. Even then, do you replace just the bad light with an LED unit or do you replace all of them at the same time? Know that with LEDs you cant just change a bulb. LEDs arent bulbs as we know them. Switching to LEDs for an existing light means replacing the entire lighting fixture, hopefully matching what you already have. If thats Whelen, then your chances are pretty good. If not, there may be some jury rigging or paint touch up.

If there’s anything good about disputes between owners and aircraft maintenance shops, its that they don’t happen very often. Unfortunately, if a big upgrade job does go sour, there may be no ready recourse for owners. Legal action is expensive and likely to be unsatisfying and in the end, its better to avoid the dispute in the first place. In other words, pick the right shop at the outset and you wont need to hone your commercial combat skills.Thats the assessment we draw from the experience of two owners who recently contacted us concerning aircraft upgrade projects that took vastly longer than the shop promised and left one owner out a couple of thousand dollars in missing materials and another fuming over both the delay and poor quality.

Anyone planning to do for-real, single-pilot IFR needs to plan for the inevitable gyro failure. As too many accidents have shown, relying on your rusty partial panel skills to get you home aint gonna cut it for much more than descending through a thin overcast. For most of us flying behind air- or vacuum-powered gyros, that means at least a backup system or an electric attitude indicator (AI). For those lucky enough to have glass panels, it could mean a battery-powered AI standing by. And it needs to be in your main scan, not on the other side of the panel. Recently, the market has become flush with choices for backup electric AIs, with a new entry from the venerable Sigma Tek. Our last look at electric AIs, in the October 2005 Aviation Consumer, concluded that the then-new Sportys offering was the top value, if not the best gyro money can buy.

Owning an airplane isn’t what it used to be. Or should we say, operating one isn’t. Given the cost of avgas, sole ownership looks less appealing than it once did and multiple-owner partnerships and fractionals look more attractive than ever. So do flying clubs, which split ownership among many and further reduce individual costs.But the problem with flying clubs is similar to renting. The airplanes probably arent the newest and pilots who own a tenth or a twentieth of an airplane arent likely to have much pride of ownership and the clubs airplanes may reflect that. But what about combining the fractional idea with the economics of a club? Thats the idea behind iFly, which launched a little over a year ago. iFly is basically an exclusive flying club that asks what fractionals ask: What if you could have all the benefits of ownership, but none of the hassles?

Need an upgrade? Borrowing against equity has never been cheaper. And it’s a buyers market for used airplanes.

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Your ship has come in; youve unloaded it for a healthy pile of cash and now you can buy a high-performance twin. And not some clunker Apache, either, but a cabin-class job, maybe with known ice protection and pressurization.

But guess what? Even more so than with light twins, the choices in this class of airplane are staggering. We cant devote an entire issue to cabin class twins so we’ll be breaking the species into smaller helpings, beginning with Cessnas offerings this time around.

And we’ll omit a few, such as the Cessna Bobcat-yeah, we know, you never heard of it-and the Cessna 335 because so few were built. Ditto the 404, which we’ll mention only in passing. Bu…