Editorial

When I travel around and visit various aviation businesses, a common complaint is how difficult—and expensive—it is to move a certification project of any kind through the FAA. The smaller the company is, the more stressful the process is because major companies like Garmin and Cessna cast a darker shadow and have the staff who can spend time doing nothing but jumping through FAA hoops. Small companies can’t afford that. When light sport came along, the idea was to spur innovation by getting the FAA out of the loop and letting manufacturers do their own approvals with loose oversight by ASTM International.

When Alan Klapmeier was in his stride at Cirrus five years ago, he liked to say that one thing he hoped to accomplish at Cirrus was to prove that you don’t need special DNA to fly an airplane. That’s probably true as far as it goes, but the other shoe to be dropped is this: You might need some special DNA to survive flying an airplane.That’s one of several conclusions I came to after poring over more than 500 accident reports for this month’s article on SR20 and SR22 safety. With its 26G seats, crashworthy cabin space and especially the CAPS BRS parachute, Cirrus didn’t necessarily promise the SR20/22 would be one the safest airplanes ever.

After a fashion, our reader surveys are sometimes like collective scab picking. That’s certainly the case for this month’s reader feedback project on owner experiences with factory rebuilt and overhauled engines. The results proved illuminating, but also highly polarized. In other words, we hear from the outer bands of the spectrum—those pleased and those not so pleased—but not from the broad middle ground of people who are mildly satisfied or maybe just not thrilled.

I’m sure you’ve heard the crudity about likening opinions to a certain anatomical feature that every human body is equipped with. But not many of us are actually paid to have opinions and because the staff of Aviation Consumer is among that chosen few, it’s worth a few words to explain how we do what we do. (Some of our opinions get us likened to the aforementioned body part, but indulge me here. There’s a point hovering just ahead.)

Given Aviation Consumers status as the only subscriber-supported, consumer-oriented publication in aviation, we are often asked to “get to the bottom” of certain issues. Some of these are mundane, such as comparing cockpit accessories or even writing about insurance, which were doing in this issue. For me, the most difficult subjects are those in which buyers, owners or consumers report radically different results and perspectives when discussing the very same product. And so it is with this months follow-up report on the Thielert diesel engines.

The letters in this months issue illustrate the dilemma Garmin finds itself in. I don’t know if the company sees this from the inside, but its noticeable from where I sit. Specifically, the new GTN series they launched this spring is striking some buyers as not that great, which is something we never heard about the GNS430 and GNS530 when they were introduced. Whats the problem here? I don’t think its all price, because these products cost a little more to install than did their predecessors a decade ago. Adjusted for inflation, theyre close. I think its perceived value, or lack of it. For the money, say some readers, these boxes just don’t do enough more than the current generation of mapcomms do.

Its a good thing I don’t own a TV because Id huck a brick at it the next time I heard the words “economic recovery.” As of five minutes ago, productivity is up, help wanted is down, inflation is in stasis and the consumer confidence index is … actually, I don’t know what the consumer confidence index means, really.

Remember that classic line from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Thats the first thing I thought of when one of Garmins engineers was demonstrating the voice recognition function in the new GMA35/GTN series were covering in this issue. I could imagine myself getting into an argument with my semi-intelligent audio panel: “Listen, you pile of transitorized crap, I said switch to comm 1! And my names not Dave!”

When the nuns were futilely trying to educate me at Saint Johns Academy for the Perpetually Misguided, the monthly report card had a blank section for comments. These were meant to be well-intentioned encouragement for depressed parents who, upon seeing columns of Ds and Fs, understandably veered toward alcoholism, if not suicide. For my monthly dispatches of despair, Sister Salisha may as we’ll have had a rubber stamp since she wrote the same thing: Pauls grades continue to fall short of his potential. (If you came of age during the 1960s, your report card said the same thing, unless you were one of those curve-busting nerds who ruined the academic careers of those of us who were too busy teaching ourselves to smoke behind the rectory to actually study.)

“Governments view of the economy,” wrote the oft-missed Ronald Reagan, “could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” The last nugget of that quote, government subsidies, accurately encapsulates the alternative fuel industry and especially ethanol. Yet it was Reagan, that stalwart of small government and free enterprise, who signed bills extending loan guarantees for the then-nascent ethanol industry. What does this have to do with aviation? We may be about to do it again in the name of preventing aviation from fouling the air with carbon dioxide and turning the planet into a hot house that will melt the polar icecaps.

As we report on page 18 of this issue, those days arent just behind but are rapidly receding. While we werent looking-and it seems like were always looking-the market hit an inflection point for glass panel upgrades. Weve hit the perfect mix of price, capability, demand and customer preference to ignite a downturn in the desirability of mechanical needles in legacy airplanes.

This months coverage on the Electronics International MVP-50 reveals an inflection point in glass upgrades for older airplanes. This is it: Even three years ago, if you really wanted to deck out a legacy airframe in full glass, you couldnt quite get there. You still had to fool around with analog or steam gauges for the power and system instruments or, if you didnt, the digital replacement choices were limited.