Commentary

Cellular Comments
We greatly appreciated your excellent article on satellite and cellular communications for pilots in the June issue of Aviation Consumer.

As we prepared for the flight of the New Spirit of St. Louis, we initially planned to use Iridium equipment primarily as a substitute for heavier and less reliable HF communications over the ocean. However, during our domestic test flights and transcontinental flights, we quickly became convinced of the tremendous utility satellite communication offers all pilots.

We were so impressed with the Iridium unit and services that we acquired through Blue Sky Network, of LaJolla, California, ( Read More »

CO Sniffers
I enjoyed the article on the CO sensors in your July issue. I have had a Senco low-level monitor for eight months and have found it easy to use in my PA 28-180.

I have spoken to several other owners of CO monitors and we all get low levels of CO on taxi/ground operations. I have recently purchased one of the little air scoops that fold out of the pilots storm window and I have found that if I use it, there’s enough clean air from the propeller slipstream to keep my reading at zero or actually < 10 PPM based on the limitations of the sensor.

As an emergency physician, I realize that a short exposure to low-level CO is probably not a big issue, but it su…

Lake AD
I can sympathize with Lake Aircraft in the dilemma you reported on in your May 2002 issue. I can only imagine the amount of money invested in the parts inventory.

But it occurs to me that no matter how long it took to raise its ugly head, this problem appears to be caused by a deficiency in the design. If so, that is a Lake problem.

It also occurs to me that accepting the FAAs terms of the AD and agreeing to purchase all the required inventory was a bad management decision. Lake should have negotiated a better agreement on the AD.

Expecting the owners of these aircraft to pay the exorbitant costs of the parts is not realistic. If Airtech Canada can make a pr…

Cirrus Cruise
I enjoyed reading your article comparing the Ovation, SR22 and Columbia airplanes in the May issue of Aviation Consumer. I have owned a Cirrus SR22 for seven months and 180 hours and can state categorically that you have underestimated themodels cruise speed.

I usually cruise between 8000 and 11,000 feet and I have never seenthe 165 KTAS cruise you cite in your article. In contrast, I typically see 182 KTAS when operating ROP and burning 17 GPH or 173 KTAS when LOP at 13 GPH.To save fuel and reduce stress on the engine, I favor LOP operation in cruise.

My typical IFR trip between San Francisco and Orange Countytakes 2 hours and consumes 29 to 30…

More on Covers
Thank you for your article on aircraft covers. I wanted to share my experiences with Bruces Custom Covers. Their product is wonderful and their willingness to customize is superb.

However, in an attempt to cover my entire aircraft, their customer service was poor and their phone manner abrupt, as though they were really busy.I suggested that every one of the fuselage and wing covers I had seen fit well, but were poorly strapped and flopped around in the wind.

I suggested a wide Velcro modification, going insofar as to purchase the materials and send them to Bruces. They were not interested, sounded mildly annoyed and far too busy to explore the possibil…

More Notes on Relief
Heres a comment on your recent article on personal relief devices. Unless we own the miraculous airplane of hangar talk, we all generate a lot of waste containers: Oil bottles.

Purchase a pack of purse-size Kleenex and a plastic automatic transmission filler funnel. Those will make a cheap and handy disposal system, at least as handy as the others and easier to find than the large mouth soda bottles.Get an ATF funnel that will fit into the oil bottle and trim the bottom so that the funnel fits tightly into the bottle neck, that is, it wont bottom out.Trim the top of the funnel to the height and angle that best fits the plumbing with the bottle…

Sweet Relief
Ref your article on personal relief devices in the January issue, great review of perhaps the least-covered aviation products.

My experience with waste handling started in cross country soaring.Fuel stops were definitely not an option and in the early 1980s, I was surprised to find out how many competition sailplane pilots used various dehydration strategies to deal with the problem.

Part of the challenge was probably related to the difficulty of getting water to flow uphill while lying in a prone position.Some lessons learned:Never play with dehydration. It will diminish your skills and will catch up with you sooner or later.Drink normally.

Baggie…

How bout a Maule?
Concerning Ken Ibolds article on buying a new Decathlon (Aviation Consumer, October 2001), for that much money he could have had an exciting-to-fly-and-land Maule. I fly mine about 200 hours a year and thanks to business, most days I fly to work.

Its a joy to fly and own and I have Cessna 182 performance with my 235 HP and so I can take four people and bags for the weekend.

-Steve Preas
Lilburn, Georgia

Yeah, but hows it do with hammerheads and Cuban Eights?

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Avidyne vs. Bendix/King
Larry Anglisano dida credible job evaluating Honeywell/Bendix/Kings KMD 550/850 in your November 2001 issue. I would…

Pump Pros and Cons
I want to encourage the FAA and/or the NTSB to institute a change in the instrumentation of small-airplane vacuum systems so that a vacuum failure is more survivable in heavy instrument conditions.

Having watched the ABC Prime Time Thursday report on 9/3/01 and having had two vacuum pump failures myself, I understand the problem. I think that the solution could be very inexpensive.

There should be no need for a potentially failure-prone back-up pump but a warning to the pilot that there has been a failure. Currently, the vacuum pump pressure gauge is the smallest indicator on the panel and is we’ll out of the scan pattern.

If an additional indicator…

Pulse Oximeters
I am a long-time subscriber to Aviation Consumer and have been a pilot for more than 26 years.  Your two recent articles on pulse oximeters were excellent. 

However, there’s a critical misunderstanding about pulse oximeters which needs to be explained.  As a practicing anesthesiologist, I use oximeters every day.  The oximeter indirectly measures the oxygen available to the tissues by calculating the percentage of hemoglobin molecules saturated with oxygen. 

However, the relationship between the oxygen available to the tissues and the oxygen saturation percentage recorded by the pulse oximeter is not a linear relationship. 

Pilots should not be fooled…

Safety Priorities
By and large, I agree with your order of setting priorities, as noted in the August issue. I have a fewexceptions.

The first is de-icing gear. Most of my flying is in the Northeast and evenly distributed throughout the calendar year. As an instrument-rated pilot, I fly in IMC often. At least six months of the year, there are airmets calling for icing in clouds.

If one wants to have a reasonable dispatch rate and adhere to the letter of FAR Part 91 regs, deicing gear takes on much higher priority especially when flying over the mountainous areas of New Hampshire, Vermont and New York, where MEAs can be 7000 to 8000 feet. Even with it, I will not launc…

Bendix Dual Mags
Reference your report in the August issue on Bendix dual magnetos: Another reason to be wary of these mags wasnt mentioned in your article, possibly because this isn’t a problem in Mooneys.

In the Cardinal installation, both fixed gear and retractable, the prop governor on dual-mag equipped engines comes with a metal plate that goes between the engine and the governor, sandwiched between two gaskets.

This plate blocks some oil passages which arent needed for that application. About two or three times a year, someone will R&R a Cardinals prop governor, toss the metal plate in the trash with the old gaskets, install the new governor without the met…