AVweb Insider

Part of my job description is to hang around people who sell airplanes, or try to. In Cessna’s salad days, the company clearly knew how to sell and it helped that the market was ready to absorb thousands of new airframes. Now, not so much. The definition of a circular argument is to ask whether […]

Last week, without much fanfare, Seattle Avionics announced that it’s marketing a new portable dual-band ADS-B In product from uAvionix. It’s called the pingBuddy2 and sells for the eye-opening price of $149. Recall that I reported on uAvionix in this piece I shot at the AEA show in New Orleans last week. The pingBuddy2 is […]

I got a haircut this week so my special interest hat fits just right. Also, my choir robe is back from the cleaners to I can preach in the full resplendence of sartorial perfection. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to yammer briefly about the bid for ATC privatization that popped up—to no one’s particular surprise—in […]

During the opening of the Aircraft Electronics Association show in New Orleans Monday, AEA chairman David Loso made a remark that caught my ear. He said it was time to think about life after ADS-B. Welcome as that sounds, I’m not sure we’re quite there yet. The ADS-B 2020 mandate is but 33 months away […]

Concept vehicles are a staple of auto and motorcycle shows. These sometimes dingbat creations aren’t meant to be serious design efforts, but flights of fancy intended to create buzz and garner press attention. Aviation shows rarely have the equivalent, at least from major manufacturers. The last one I can think of is the Cessna NGP. […]

When I was preparing this week’s Question of the Week, I was up to the third question when I realized that blood cheering for errant drone pilots to be jailed is not a good thing. In fact, it’s a distinctly bad thing, absent any malicious intent or egregious negligence. To review, this concerns the story […]

I hate it when someone peers into my eyes and, within a nanosecond to two, sees all the character flaws within. “You’re a rule breaker, aren’t you?” The query was from our team coach, Sally, and on the strength of one minor little transgression, she had nailed me with unnerving accuracy. When we go to […]

It’s getting so a poor blogger can’t catch a breath around here. No sooner do I write about NASA considering sending the first Orion mission around the moon than along comes Elon Musk to say, never mind, we’re going next year. While fellow billionaire Richard Branson struggles to shoot a few tourists on a crummy […]

Here’s an aerospace story that hasn’t generated much notice. The Trump White House is apparently pushing NASA to consider making the first flight of the new Orion manned space system a circumlunar flight, rather than an unmanned test mission. That has a nice, if somewhat melancholy, resonance to it. Fifty years after the fact, we […]

I mostly fly aircraft certificated under Part 23, but last month, I had five flights in a row in four different light sport aircraft. All this light sport flying got me thinking about an opinion piece I read years ago with the self-explanatory title: “The Skycatcher’s Death Proves the LSA Rule is a Failure.” That […]