Modifications

The Gold Wing in the main photo was shot at Honda Aircraft Companys massive headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina. Its the first thing you see when entering the main lobby, and presumably its there as an important reminder of Hondas heritage. In 1946, Soichiro Honda established the Honda Technical Research Institute to develop machine tools and engines. In 2017, the brand name is delivering an ultramodern jet. For motorheads and curious consumers alike, the Honda timeline of milestones is an interesting read.

Given its European roots, Diamond came at the DA40s design as sort of a hybridbetween the sleek glass gliders the company started out producing when it was Hoffmann Flugzeugbau and more traditional aircraft U.S. customers are accustomed to. This yielded what we think can arguably be called a world airplane.

There’s a lot of emphasis on airframe corrosion, yet owners and technicians rarely consider the corrosion that plagues avionics-a system that can be more susceptible than the airframe. Big-airplane maintenance programs keep on top of it for good reasons.

Cold starts, hot starts and over enthusiastic priming are just some of the scenarios that can lead to an airplane sitting on the ground because the engine refuses to fire. The best way to ensure a quick engine start is to boost the energy to the spark plugs because with enough spark, the fuel and air mixture will certainly burn. Champion Aerospaces SlickStart magneto booster promises to do just that. Heres how it works, plus an overview of aircraft piston engine ignition theory.

I read the portable oxygen concentrator article in the June 2017 Aviation Consumer with interest because my wife has a lung deficiency and has needed O2 when we fly above 6000 feet. We have been using the Aerox system, but she says it dries her nose.

With some new flagship piston singles flirting with the $1 million mark, its logical that qualified buyers are eyeballing the entry-level turboprop single market. That could give Texas-based Evolution Aircraft (previously Lancair, before it was sold last summer) more opportunity to sell its Evolution Turboprop experimental airplane kits.

Diamond Aircraft CEO Christian Dries is nothing if not a pragmatist, albeit an adventurous one. At Aprils Aero in Friedrichshafen, Germany, he showed both sides of the same coin when he announced three new single-engine piston models, one powered by an untried new gasoline engine from Lycoming. The latter even he concedes is an admission of sorts. The diesel engines Diamond has championed for 15 years havent fared we’ll in the high-performance single-engine market simply because the power options havent been there.

Weve long urged aircraft owners to retrofit shoulder harnesses for all seats of their airplanes if at all possible. The simple reason is that a restraint system that keeps your head and upper torso from smacking into the instrument panel or seat in front of you during an accident sequence is the single most effective mod you can make to your airplane to radically increase the chance of everyone aboard surviving an accident.

For the 2017 model year, Cirrus released the G6 SR20, which gets both an avionics upgrade and a new IO-390 Lycoming engine. Cirrus said its decision to re-engine the entry-level SR20 is significant for a couple of reasons. For one, it plans to aggressively market the aircraft to fleet operators whove expressed a strong preference for a four-cylinder Lycoming over a six-cylinder Continental. Moreover, the IO-390 substantially reduces weight, while also stretching the TBO for high-use operations.

If youve been waiting for a cheaper FAA-approved retrofit autopilot you might not have to wait much longer. In fact, you can even have your shop begin the installation. This past April, both TruTrak Flight Systems and Trio Avionics came to Sun n Fun with STC approvals on the installation hardware and wiring harnesses for experimental autopilots.

Back in the day-as in 1939-the Ercoupe was designed to be exceptionally safe by making it resistant to stalls and spins. But the airplane racked up a number of firsts, including being the first successful production GA airplane that had a nosewheel, plus a fully cowled engine. This contributed to more speed than most of its counterparts had. Better yet, an Ercoupe can handle a crosswind of twice the velocity that can be dealt with by almost any other airplane.

When L-3 introduced the Lynx NGT9000 multifunction ADS-B transponder in 2015, we nearly dismissed it for all but the highest-end applications. With a starting price that put it we’ll north of ten grand, the NGT9000 seemed like a questionable investment for buyers looking for an affordable path to ADS-B compliance.