Avionics

For at least the last five years and probably longer than that, the retrofit autopilot market has been moribund. Autoflight systems have gotten so expensive that only the most dedicated buyers were willing to part with $20K or north to install one. AirVenture 2017 seems determined to turn that trend around in more or less […]

TruTrak Flight Systems announced that it—together with EAA— has earned STC approval for the Vizion autopilot system in Cessna 172 and 177 models. This is the first autopilot manufactured by experimental autopilot maker TruTrak to be approved for a certified aircraft. The company was targeting AirVenture 2017 for a completed STC and it achieved it. […]

As AirVenture 2017 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, opens on Monday, Garmin will have no shortage of new products to show. In addition to the two new retrofit autopilots (here’s a video report), there are two portable weather receivers, a new low-cost ADS-B Out solution for the market’s lower end, a third-party autopilot interface for the G5 […]

ForeFlight is now offering an ADS-B In device that’s compatible with its flight-planning app for $199, the company said this week. The unit, developed in collaboration with uAvionix, is small (about 3 inches by 1 inch and weighing less than an ounce), easy to set up and use and provides weather and air-to-air traffic data. […]

With less than a week to go before the start of AirVenture at Oshkosh, Garmin announced two new retrofit autopilot systems—the budget-based GFC500 for basic airframes and the higher-end GFC600 for high-performance singles, twins and turboprops. The GFC500 is priced at $6995, comes from Garmin’s experimental avionics line (it will have STC approval) and has […]

The wishes of ForeFlight users eager to use Jeppesen departure, arrival and approach plates have come true. The partnership between ForeFlight and the famed navigation data publisher was announced in early May, but access to the instrument plates only became available to ForeFlight users Wednesday. The upgrade to Jeppesen charts covering the continental U.S. plus […]

A good friend of mine who’s an aircraft broker called me this week to ask for my take on what to do about ADS-B installations. He has to have a ready answer for buyers and sellers of legacy airplanes who are asking about this. What was I telling people, he wondered, laboring under the misguided […]

Nextant, the Cleveland, Ohio, company that takes in older aircraft and remanufactures them with fresh upgrades, has announced a new “incremental” upgrade program for the Beech 400A/Hawker 400XP twinjet aircraft. The full conversion to an XTi costs about $3 million, the company says, a cost that “not everyone is able to justify.” Now Nextant is […]

President Donald Trump will use a proposal to privatize air traffic control in the U.S. to kick off a weeklong blitz of announcements to push his infrastructure revitalization plan. At an announcement that includes an Oval Office ceremony and White House Rose Garden event on Monday morning, White House officials have confirmed Trump will affirm […]

The newest version of ForeFlight’s electronic flight bag software will include advanced fuel and performance planning tools for an additional $100 per year ($200 per year over the basic subscription price). Tyson Weihs, ForeFlight co-founder and CEO, said, “The new performance product that we’re launching delivers high performance flight planning for high performance airplanes.” The […]