In the March 2021 issue of Aviation Consumer, I started a lively discussion on the development of unleaded avgas—a topic that’s again on the EPA’s radar. Several companies continue to work the engineering necessary to make unleaded avgas a reality for the majority of our GA aircraft engines. Here’s a continuation of the discussion, and […]
A few years have passed since the unleaded avgas discussion came full circle, but we’re still pumping 100LL. Make no mistake, it’s still an EPA focus. We could find ourselves modifying engines to make unleaded gas work in our airplanes. It’s worth a Q&A discussion, which I share here. DEVELOPMENTAL SIMMER Full disclaimer: I was an […]
If you fly a G1 or G2 Cirrus you might have considered upgrading the OEM mechanical fuel quantity gauge with the Aerospace Logic FL202G digital “smart gauge” control head, along with the CiES digital magnetoresistive fuel senders. That’s just what we did back in 2014 for an Aviation Consumer field report. But as we described […]
That’s what you’ll likely find when your aircraft is in for an engine display upgrade and your avionics shop suggests-as they should-to overhaul or repair the fuel quantity senders. Aside from having to drain the fuel tanks, this creates extra work for the installer because chances are they’ll have to send the sensors off for overhaul. We’ve found that for some shops, dealing with old OEM sensors is uncharted territory. The task has to begin with good documentation, and that includes having the aircraft maintenance manual.
The long, torturous road to replace 100LL with an unleaded alternative just got longer and more torturous as the FAA temporarily halted testing on the two leading candidate fuels in May. The agency said its testing revealed differences significant enough with 100LL to obviate further testing.
Its long been recognized that an effective way of staring a fight in a bar catering to pilots is to innocently ask about procedures for hot starting big-bore Lycoming or Continental engines and then step back. The chairs will start flying. Thats about what happened when we started the research for this piece. We heard it all. Being either foolish or fearless, we immersed ourselves in the subject to see if we could come up with information as to why hot starting is a problem, find recommendations for maintenance and operating technique that can minimize the problem and see if there are aftermarket devices that can help. We did, we did and there are.
Ignorance is bliss, but there’s a dark feeling when a pilot realizes there is far less fuel on board than the fuel gauges indicate. Get lucky like I once did and you’ll recognize the inaccuracies inherent with aging analog fuel quantity gauges when youre on the ground. The next step is chasing the problem, which means removing the instrument for testing and rebuilding and recalibrating the fuel measuring sensors in the tanks.
Among the many avionics gadgets to install, an aftermarket fuel totalizer could offer the most utility. These devices are simple to operate, they work with most modern GPS navigators for trip endurance calculations, and while installation technique is critical, they arent overly complex to retrofit. There are four major players in the standalone fuel computer market: Shadin Avionics, Insight Avionics, JP Instruments and Electronics International. In this article we’ll look at each product line and show how they can interface with a GPS navigator.
Even with fuel prices at historic lows in the aviation world, pilots are constantly looking to save when they top off. Various apps keep us apprised of current pump prices, so we can plan our stops. But, what if there were a way to get a discount from the retail price when we taxi up to an FBO?
Check out reader feedback from last month’s Aviation Consumer. Subscribers discuss the modernity of aircraft vacuum systems vs. electronic attitude gyros, technical issues with Lycoming fuel pumps, and a crucial feature the Garmin Pilot app still lacks.
The NTSB reports of the 100 most recent B55 Baron crashes turned up some unexpected results: there were only three runway loss of control (RLOC) events, far fewer than we expect for tricycle-gear airplanes; for an airplane with a fuel system that has a reputation as simple, the majority of the 15 fuel-related accidents involved mismanaging the system and fuel selectors and over half of the pilot-induced gear-up events involved retracting the gear on rollout.We have long been impressed with the landing gear design on the Baron-it doesnt take a rocket surgeon to maintain. Only two of the Baron accidents involved a system failure in which the pilot could not get the Firestones down and locked.
In looking at the most recent 100 accidents of the Cessna 336/337 we formed the opinion that there was little wrong with the airplanes, but had our doubts about some of the pilots who chose to fly them.
