Technology Analysis

We have kept a close eye on the safety record of the Cirrus SR series since the beginning. Things weren’t so good at first—excellent training has paid off.

As of this writing, G100UL high-octane unleaded avgas is on sale at two airports in California with more expected. What does the future hold for users?

Thanks to the internet allowing me to work from anywhere that has a high-speed connection, my wife and I have chosen to live in the mountains near a very user-friendly, general aviation airport (Boundary County, Idaho, 65S). That means that we spend time flying into backcountry airports, boating on remote lakes and hiking where we […]

Last December, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) created a stir by publishing a recommendation calling for the FAA to require that all enclosed-cabin piston-engine aircraft be equipped with a low-level carbon monoxide (CO) detector and that aviation alphabet organizations inform their members about the dangers of CO poisoning, encourage them to install CO detectors […]

There’s so much buzz around the emergence of electric airplanes that it’s easy to forget what animates most of the enterprise is press releases. New airplane announcements fly fast and furious; the airplanes themselves, not so much. Cutting through this background noise is the innovative Slovenian company, Pipistrel. Last year, as it promised it would, […]

GARMIN RADAR INSTALLS Regarding the article authored by Larry Anglisano in the August 2021 Aviation Consumer, WX Radar Upgrades: Garmin’s GWX 75 Is Top, the article mentions the Cessna 210 and also includes a photo of a Cessna T210 with a 10-inch radar pod. The article never explicitly states that Garmin’s GWX 75 will play […]

If you think those features are a recipe for building the ultimate futuristic flight deck, you have it right. And even in a world where everything is connected over the internet, you might not expect to be able to remotely connect to the cockpit anytime, anyplace. But you can.    That’s exactly what Honeywell has […]

Garmin’s launch of the new aera 760 portable navigator couldn’t have come at a worse time. Historically, Sun ‘n Fun and AirVenture have been the ideal backdrop for new Garmin gadget intros, but with both shows canceled, the company can’t generate the usual airshow buzz to get the marketing momentum going. But does the tablet-saturated […]

If you’ve recently stepped up to the jet world you probably haven’t heard of the iPreflight app or even APG, but there’s a deep company history that dates back to 1981. APG’s founders operated Aircraft Performance Unlimited, an engineering firm that catered to the airline dispatch industry and ultimately grew to support over 65 airlines around the world with an integrated dispatch system. That company was purchased in 1995 by Jeppesen, which integrated the APU dispatch program into its own service menu.

However, the Partevania purchase got Vulcanair the rights to the P68, a Luigi Pascale-designed twin that found a market in the training and light transport segments. It’s powered by a pair of Lycoming IO-360s. Vulcanair lists six variants of the P68, including the P68R retractable and two Observer versions, one of which features a glazed nose for observation and patrol work. A stretch version of the aircraft, called the A-Viator, is powered by Rolls-Royce 250B turboprops and carries nine passengers and two crew. There are 49 P68s in service in the U.S., including three turboprop versions, according to the FAA registry.

SpotX is assigned a telephone number for your appropriate country during activation. This allows contacts in the same country to send SMS messages to your SpotX without incurring any additional fees. There are four key components to the SpotX product: the SpotX hardware, its activation and service plan, its configuration through the website and the SpotX Device Updater application used to synchronize account information and update firmware. As weve learned from other satcomms, setup and activation can be a chore. For the SpotX, it begins with setting up an account on the FindMeSpot website from a Mac or PC, requiring a credit card for payment and information about your hardware.

Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of the Evektor Sportstar. We had (past tense) several of them here in southern Indiana, and I administered a lot of checkrides in the Sportstar. I believe that the Sportstar is a major player in the LSA community, with a couple hundred of them flying in the U.S. At one point I think they were the third most numerous LSA, behind Flight Design and Legend. That would put them in the middle of the pack of the ones you considered. And I know the Sportstar had its share of accidents. Why did you omit the Evektor from your accident statistics?