Safety

A fighter jock can be forgiven for sniffing at the shallow inadequacies of general aviation pilot training: It takes but 60 to 80 hours to graduate from witless passenger to certified aviator, the briefest flash of time that necessarily ignores much of what a pilot should-or would like-to know.

One aspect of training that gets short shrift-okay, no shrift-is crash survival, specifically ditching. Military aviators endure a grueling, soggy dose of this training, both in dunker tanks and occasionally in live water exercises. GA pilots, on the other hand, are referred to section 6 of the Aeronautical Information Manual and told to have a nice day.

Recognizing this, several companies o…

Although the recent demise of IFT-Pro might suggest otherwise, the market for computer-based IFR training and practice software is alive and well. Hardly a week goes by without a reader phoning or e-mailing for recommendations.

And have you looked at the prices of these things lately? Capabilities that used to cost several hundred dollars are now available for around a C-note.

Last time we looked at these programs, our focus was on the sort of instrument practice programs the average pilot would find useful and affordable, which eliminated all of the bona fide PCATDs. Well do the same this time. Obviously, weve kicked out a slew of self-proclaimed flight simulators which are b…

Last month, we reviewed the three big name IFR flight sims,Aviation Teachwares ELITE, ASAs On Top and Jeppesens FlitePro. Among these, no hands down winner emerged, at least for buyers shopping for a sim program for IFR brush up.

Each had distinct advantages and disadvantages, depending on your budget, training preferences and hardware. Hearing some favorable comments about some impressive game programs-thats right, games-we decided to take a look.

Despite being spring loaded to the dismissive position because ofthe toy connection, we came away convinced that, for some buyers, these are a solid, cost effective choice. Youll need a heavy duty machine, however, including a…

As with most things in life, the paper part of aviation training can be at best tedious and at worst onerous and just plain wrong. In a perfect world, all ground school instruction would be cheap, conducted by enthusiastic and qualified teachers at times and locations which don’t interfere with frenetic schedules and Santa Claus would be real.

In your dreams. Realizing this, scads of vendors have developed PC-based instructional software intended to provide a reasonable simulacrum of aviation nirvana. We don’t pretend we looked at all of them but what follows is tour-the-horizon view of some major players.

Simple Test Prep
At their most basic, this variety of ground…

Even if youre not one of those dotcom zillionaires, if you own a moderately expensive airplane, youve probably accumulated a nice tidy cache of wealth youd like to retain for your retirement years.

Owning an airplane, however, puts that wealth at risk. One of the biggest problems to face aircraft owners in recent years is the lack of higher limits of liability coverage beyond the run-of-the-mill million bucks, a sum thats chump change by modern insurance standards.

This is an expensive problem for pilots transitioning into bigger airplanes, but it plagues everyone who needs significant limits of liability, including people who have owned the same airplane for years.

Why It H…