Letters: August 2011

Cheap Plastic Indeed

“Aftermarket Saves Big”? (June 2011 Aviation Consumer) Not if you buy from Plane Plastics! Their stuff takes an enormous amount of trimming and fitting. At best, it ends up looking second rate and some cannot be made to fit at all.

I can show you pictures of stuff I ordered by model and serial number of the aircraft. The left instrument panel cover was especially bad. I was terribly disappointed by the whole experience.

An acquaintance on the field ordered a whole suite of plastic for a 172, interior and exterior, from them and had a labor bill of about $4000 for the trimming and installation.

Russ Walker,
Brawley, California

There are a few points wefd like to clarify regarding your article “Flight Guide iEFB 3.0” (July 2011 Aviation Consumer).

ForeFlight and other iPad Apps do not have an airport diagram for every airport. They are missing approximately 2000 airports for the USA. Flight Guide iEFB, on the other hand, has nearly 5000 airports coast to coast because we research and draw them ourselves. We also geo-reference all of our airport diagrams. Other iPad Apps only georeference about 700 FAA airport diagrams.

The FAA only provides taxiway identifiers for larger tower airports. In Flight Guide iEFB, we depict all the taxiway identifiers, as we’ll as non-standard traffic patterns, surface types, runway gradients and pilot-controlled lights. We also point out the location of all the businesses, which comes in handy at an unfamiliar field.

We include panel IFR & VFR charts so pilots can read the pertinent information (Transition Routes, Restricted Airspaces, Legends, etc.) found along the edges. We also take info from the AFD, but then add information we obtain directly from the airport managers. We have a team of researchers making sure our data is the best and most complete. We push these updates to the iPad daily, rather than on the 28-day cycle as everyone else does.

Our geo-referenced airport diagrams and IAPs show an airplane icon depicting your direction, not just a yellow dot as shown in the article.

You knocked our pricing, but we feel such superior airport information is worth more. Itfs the most comprehensive airport information a VFR pilot can have.

Brenda Garcia,
Airguide Publications

I enjoyed your article on the CH 750 STOL LSA. However, there are a few errors that need to be corrected.

Designer Chris Heintz has developed his designs independently of Zenith Aircraft Company (Zenith). Zenith produces kits for the experimental homebuilt market under license from Chris Heintz. Zenair Ltd. (Chris Heintzf original company in Canada) and Zenith Aircraft Co., are not sister companies as you state, but are independent. Zenith does not supply kits to Eastman or anyone else for ready-to-fly SLSA. Zenair in Canada is the only authorized company to supply SLSA kits/parts for the CH 750 STOL SLSA and Zodiac 650 SLSA. Other than Zenith and Zenair, no other company is authorized to manufacture parts of Chris Heintz designs.

I also need to point out that Chrisf last name is spelled HEINTZ (like the ketchup but with the addition of a “t”). As a matter of fact, Zenith is an anagram of Heintz. Sorry for being upfront about this, but itfs important that this is clear to everyone.

Matt Heintz,
VP, Zenair