briefs

Although Garmin rolled out no new portable GPS this year, it did announce upgrades for its popular panel mount equipment, the GNS 400 and 500 line of navigators. WAAS upgrades for the GNS400/500 series will be available for under $1,500 by the end of 2004, says Garmin. If you’d like to add terrain detail and […]

Since the introduction of the Garmin 196 last year, the aviation portable GPS market has been quiet. Lowrance tossed a rock into the calm waters at AirVenture this week, displaying the new AirMap 500 and AirMap 1000 portables. The 500 has a three-inch diagonal screen with 240 X 180 pixel density, while the AirMap 1000 […]

Maule appears equally bullish on selling diesels, and it will be marketing in the U.S. This week at OSH, Maule debuted an M-9 fitted with SMA’s SR 305-230 aerodiesel, which was first certified in Europe a while ago and is now poised to make inroads in the U.S. Like the Diamond, the Maule diesel’s appeal […]

BRS, maker of ballistic recovery chutes for aircraft, said this week its new system for Light Sport airplanes is ready to go, and available for sale. Also, BRS President Mark Thomas said OMF Aircraft will include a BRS chute as standard equipment on its new four-place Symphony 4, which is expected to be on the […]

Was it really only early this year that Diamond announced certification approval for its DA-40TDI diesel-powered Star? Yes, it was, but the company says it has experienced unusually strong demand for this aircraft in Europe. Thus far, 25 of the diesel-powered Stars have been sold in Europe and the orders continue to pour in. The […]

The long and winding road to the Smithsonian got a little longer for the Boeing 307 Stratoliner on Tuesday. The one-of-a-kind airliner was supposed to arrive at EAA AirVenture Tuesday morning before heading to Washington for permanent display next week, but EAA volunteers said carburetor problems prevented it from making the trip from the Seattle […]

The last-ditch, final-straw, by-a-thread effort to save Meigs Field may have found an unlikely poster boy in the form of a 63-year-old banner tower from Maine. Richard Randell put his 58-year-old Piper Super Cruiser onto the grass beside the torn-up runway at Meigs after an electrical failure Monday Randell was on his way to EAA […]

Ken Keith announced at Oshkosh that his team will assume management control of Extra Aircraft beginning August 1, resume production of the aerobatic Extra 300 and seek certification of the $1.5 million, pressurized, six-seat, turbine-powered, 235-KTAS-on-20-GPH (with a 1,700-pound useful load) Extra 500. The Extra was nearly wiped off the map by the convergence of […]

Since last year, four pilots have been learning to fly the earliest Wright airplanes so they could advance to the Wrights’ 1903 Flyer in time for this December’s centennial celebration. Veteran test pilot Scott Crossfield, first to fly Mach 2, has been overseeing their training. “It’s one of the most challenging programs I’ve worked on,” […]

Well, never accuse the Mooney Aerospace Group of being afraid to try something new. The company, which started life as AASI, developing the now-abandoned push/pull, turboprop, canard-ed JetCruzer, then bought the assets of bankrupt Mooney Airplane Company, announced Tuesday it’s going to build light-sport aircraft. The Mooney Toxo, a two-place sport aircraft with a Rotax […]