features_old

Sagetech, a company little known among general aviation pilots, has introduced a new portable ADS-B box at Sun ‘n Fun that combines weather, traffic and a compact, sophisticated AHRS with synthetic vision. If it sounds like this gadget can turn your iPad into a basic EFIS, that’s exactly what it does, according to Sagetech. Measuring […]

As yet more portable ADS-B products hit the market, Sporty’s Pilot Shop is out today with a second generation of its hot-selling Stratus. The new device is being produced in a partnership between Sporty’s, ForeFlight and Appareo, which developed the hardware. Like the Clarity, it will feature dual-band traffic and an AHRS to be displayed […]

Every airshow, no matter where or when, has its share of challenges, and hopefully its share of good luck, too, and this year’s edition of Sun ‘n Fun, in Lakeland, Fla., seems to have plenty of both. No military jet team will appear to split the sky with a pure booming roar, thanks to the […]

The president of the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association says the industry has been underreporting the impact of the LSA sector on aviation as a whole and is remedying that with new numbers. Dan Johnson told AVweb at Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Fla., that his group took a conservative approach to reporting LSA numbers by […]

Well, it’s not entirely new, but it’s the first time this no-nonsense pickup truck of an airplane has appeared at Sun ‘n Fun and in the U.S. The Discovery 201 is an offshoot of a Russian design called the Akord 201, which found some service in Russia as a heavy-hauling utility airplane. The aircraft has […]

The FAA’s decision to delay its tower shutdowns until June was a save for Sun ‘n Fun, but the federal government still has declined to pay all the expenses of sending 50 extra controllers and 20 technicians to cope with the traffic, so the bill — an estimated $285,000 — is going to the Sun […]

The good news is that you probably won’t need cylinders, but you’ll always get a new crank. Buying a factory-new exchange is sometimes a practical choice. When Diamond introduced the two-seat Katana to North America in 1995, it might as well have been powered by alien technology. The 81-HP Rotax 912F3 was about as familiar […]

Each week, we run a sampling of the letters received to our editorial inbox here in AVmail. One letter that’s particularly relevant, informative, or otherwise compelling will headline this section as our “Letter of the Week,” and we’ll send the author an official AVweb baseball cap as a “thank you” for interacting with us (and […]

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this: A guy walks into a pilots’ lounge and asks, “Anyone here got an opinion?” Three hours later he staggers out, weighted down by the torments of the flying world. Similar thing happened on our recent Brainteaser survey. A mother-lode of angst burbled out when we fracked the depths […]

So now that all the towers are closed, what are we to do? Will chaos reign? Have the dogs of doom been loosed? Not quite, but depending on where you fly, there could be some challenges ahead that will be unnerving. And just to put some numbers on it, the FAA-announced closures will shutter 149 […]