Avionics

At AirVenture 2015 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, BendixKing announced the KI-300 solid-state electronic attitude indicator. Designed as a retrofit replacement for the company’s mechanical, vacuum-driven KI-256 and KG-258 attitude gyros, the KI-300 has the same form factor as the KI-256/KI-258 gyros—which means it will bolt into the same location as the old iron gyros it replaces—but […]

Aspen Avionics announced this week that it has acquired Accord Technology, a U.S.-based company that supplies certified GPS receivers for the aviation market, mostly for use in mandate-compliant ADS-B equipment. Accord has been an assembly and distribution arm for Accord India, which develops and manufactures GPS receivers for a broad range of markets. Aspen’s John […]

After several years of market silence, Scottsdale, Arizona-based TKM Avionics is under new ownership and says it’s working hard to improve the factory support of existing TKM slide-in radios while also planning an improved product line. Aviation Consumer editor Larry Anglisano talked with TKM’s Joe Gavin at Sun ‘n Fun 2015 in Lakeland, Florida, for […]

Does anybody not have a smartphone these days? Actually, some people don’t. I ran into a guy in an airport the other day using the old standby flip phone with what looked like a mono screen. Imagine! He’s probably better for it, not feeling the need to constantly fill every idle second fiddling with what’s […]

It wasn’t long ago that an entry-level, two-axis autopilot was priced around 10 grand—including installation. Today, that price is double. Add some options and the bottom line could soar toward $30,000. These big proposals have many owners repairing older autopilots. But as service parts for older systems become obsolete, repair costs are high, downtime is […]

Occupational hazards come in all shapes and sizes: Nuclear technicians have to worry about ionizing radiation; Amtrak engineers, we’ve just learned, have to dodge cinderblocks hurled at their heads. For journalists—and consumers of news, I hasten to add—the risk is being spun up like a dime-store top with so many incomplete facts, half truths and […]

At the Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California, on Saturday, I scribbled in my notebook a wry comment from Tine Tomazic of Pipistrel Aircraft, the innovative Slovenian company that’s an unabashed supporter—and maker—of electric airplanes. Tomazic said he hoped the era of electric conversions was coming to an end and he pointedly noted that […]

Is truly autonomous flight for aircraft—manned or not—lurking just around the corner? It depends on how you define around the corner, but some people in the autonomous flight field think it could be a reality within a decade and electric propulsion will both hurry it along and play a major role in its development. Sanjiv […]

Heading into a world of electric aircraft, we need to know on which systems we can rely and to what extent. Michael Riccifrom LaunchPoint Technologies spoke with AVweb at the Electric Aircraft Symposium about parallel redundancy, failure mitigation, and how fly-by-wire has set the standard forreliability in future designs. Duration: 6:46 File Size: 6.1 MB […]

Self-flying aircraft are coming, says Sanjiv Singh of Near Earth Autonomy, though it may be a while before they’re safe and reliable enough to carry passengers. Singh spoke with us at the Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California, about the remaining problems to be solved, both technical and regulatory. Duration: 6:53 File Size: 5.9 […]