Ownership

After seeing theSN3308, I naturally assumed that its inventor and Sandel founder GerryBlock was a seasoned veteran of the avionics industry. So when I flew down to SandelAvionics in a northern suburb of San Diego to interview him for this article, I was quitesurprised to learn that the SN3308 was Block’s very first aviation product. […]

A couple of months ago, Ihad Avionics West replace some of the avionics in my 1979Cessna T310R. In particular, I changed out my decade-old Loran for a II Morrow GX50approach-certified GPS. At the same time, I yanked out the airplane’s original-equipmenthorizontal situation indicator – an old vacuum-driven Century NSD-360 – and installedthe new Sandel Avionics […]

All ELTs have one thing in common, their main purpose is to notify potential rescuers(by different means) that an aircraft has run into a solid object and someone could be inneed of help. But the technology for doing this is in the midst of a big change. Most current ELTs operate at 121.50 and 243.00 […]

Turbocharging Basics What Really Happens What Can Go Wrong? A Troubleshooting Strategy Oneof the most perplexing maintenance problem areas that owners of high-performance pistonaircraft have to deal with is the turbocharging system. I often hear from unhappy ownerswho have already incurred considerable expense in overhauling or replacing costlyturbo-system components without having resolved the trouble. As […]

The aircraft magneto is a cursed thing. Its technology seemingly dates to the discovery of fire, every engine needs at leasttwo and on a dark and stormy night over the Appalachians, the last thing you want to thinkabout is how many fragile moving parts are whirling around inside a mag at the speed ofheat. But […]

Thetime had finally come to replace the engines on my 1979 Piper Aerostar. N6069N’s leftengine had gone past its 1800-hour published TBO, and the right one was rapidlyapproaching that number. Both engines were running as well as they ever did, and AVwebeditor Mike Busch kept advising me to keep flying until the engines started showing […]

This is a five-part series on Active Noise Reduction in General Aviation. It came about because hundreds and hundreds of you have been asking good questions about ANR technology and its advantages in airplanes. This series is intended to provide G.A. pilots with a fairly technical and thorough understanding of this technology and the important […]

NOTE: Dr. Jim Yates provided substantial contributions to this section of ANR 101. Dr. Yates is Professor and chair, S.P.A. of John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, and principal of Audiology Associates Hawaii. Previous sections of this series have discussed active noise cancellation and the technical issues associated specifically with general aviation […]

In this section, we’ll be looking at the comfort and human-factors issues associated with ANR headsets. The ergonomics of the human head demand a wide range of adjustments to deliver comfort over hours of use. Optimizing the physical headset for pilot use Active pilots have been searching for ways to improve the physical aspects of […]

Looking at actual cockpit noise profiles, and how well aviation headsets cope with it In Section 2 of this series, you learned how engineers measure effectiveness of active noise canceling systems in the laboratory. But since we don’t fly in the lab, our emphasis will now shift to studying the actual noise spectrums in various […]