Someone just flipped the switch and shut off summer. Aircraft owners who live in the temperate climes are preparing their machines for the demands of winter. Unless those owners have been living under a rock, they know that part of that preparation involves figuring out a way to start the engine when the frost is on the pumpkin because they know that firing it up in very cold weather, without some form of preheat, can do a lot of damage to the engine.
Acompany called AeroEngine Protection Corp. has been aggressively marketing a range of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance programs for piston engines. While the concept is new in the piston aircraft market, similar programs have been the norm in the jet aircraft world for years, and aircraft OEMs, used aircraft dealers, engine overhaulers and fleet operators are signing on with AEPCs programs for pistons in impressive numbers. Aircraft Bluebook has even recognized the program when publishing typical resale costs.
Its easy to see why. Although it has expanded with off-site annexes, the basic footprint of the Cirrus factory hasnt changed appreciably since the first airplanes were delivered in 1999. But it has undergone substantial reorganizations and yet another was underway when we visited Duluth in August 2017.
For the past few years, the Innovation Center at AirVenture is the place to visit if youre even slightly interested in electric mobility, flying cars and UAVs. Sure, its a place for dreamers but dreams spark reality, I suppose. This year while doing a video shoot there on the Workhorse SureFly helicopter/VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) personal aircraft, it was obvious that some of the dream machines are getting bigger-as in big enough that people would actually fly in some of them. The majority in the steady crowd of onlookers waiting in the long line to climb into the sleek SureFly seemed like they would and thats a good sign for market acceptance.
While all eyes were on TruTrak and Trio this past year (both were knee-deep in earning STCs for experimental autopilots), Garmin was quietly working on its own retrofit autopilot. Actually, the company already had two: the one thats integrated within the G3X experimental avionics suite, plus the impressive GFC700 thats built into the G1000 and G3000 integrated avionics.
The Grumman Cheetah and bigger-engined Tiger may be overlooked by some buyers searching the crowded under-$50K used airplane market. In fact, among entry-level Cessna and Piper models, the AA-5A Cheetah could very we’ll be a used market leader. With a sporty slide-back canopy, snappy handling and reasonable cruise speed for its fuel-sipping 150-HP powerplant, a Cheetah works for training, traveling and for tooling around the local area. On the other hand, the 180-HP AA-5B Tiger might be the better of the two cats when more climb performance and load-hauling is needed.
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.
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. If you think the average new Cirrus, Cessna TTx or Mooney owner doesnt have time to build an airplane, you may be right. But building an Evolution isn’t like building a typical homebuilt in the garage.
There are very good reasons for not permitting the use of portable ADS-B Out devices and to retain the TSOs as they currently exist. Starting in 2020, ADS-B will be the primary mode of ATC surveillance, and will largely replace the current ATCRBS (ATC radar beacon system, with portions of the ATCRBS retained as a backup). Portable ADS-B Out devices suffer from some major limitations, including reliability of powering, RF radiation pattern nulling and attenuation resulting from the antenna being inside the aircraft. There’s also the lack of connection to the aircraft static system.
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.
While wireless connectivity is taken for granted outside the cockpit, its recently begun to see some use in the cockpit. Portable ADS-B devices connect wirelessly to our portables, but wireless communications with panel-mount, certified avionics is far less common. Garmin changed that with its RS-232-based Flight Stream 100/200 wireless hubs.
Years ago, I was flying a friends P-51 Mustang and was flying low-level at roughly 400 knots (at the time there was no speed restriction below 10,000 feet) when the rudder flutter began. I flew vertical and reduced to idle power to slow the airplane down, where the flutter stopped at about 170 knots. The violence of the flutter was unbelievable and destroyed nearly every instrument in the cockpit, leaving gauge needles lying at the bottom of their instruments. We tiptoed back to the airport in Van Nuys, California, for an immediate and uneventful landing because the airframe had a vibration that made me nervous.
