Ownership

In a market rich with tablet and smartphone navigation apps, Garmin has announced a new, purpose-built portable GPS navigator, the aera 660. It’s the company’s first dedicated aviation portable since the aera 796 appeared in 2011. Following the trend in smartphones, the aera 660 has a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen and more interface capability than any […]

The staff at Aviation Consumer magazine is conducting an avionics equipment and brand satisfaction survey. They want to know about your experience with recent major avionics upgrades, including ADS-B equipment. The results will appear in an upcoming issue of Aviation Consumer magazine. Click here to take the survey.

Virgin Galactic will roll out a replacement SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane on Friday and while it will look the same as the one that crashed in 2014 there are some important internal differences. According to the Verge, the company says the new vehicle has more automation and failsafe systems designed to prevent the kind of […]

The Hypstair hybrid-electric powertrain ran for the first time this month, launching a test series for the project led by Slovenian aircraft maker Pipistrel. Hypstair, which has been making the rounds at European aviation events, features 200 kilowatts of takeoff power and 150 kilowatts of continuous power suitable for a light GA aircraft. It can […]

I spent a good portion of January conducting interviews and research for a major print piece on electric aircraft to appear in the March issue of Aviation Consumer. My impression is that there’s as much going on in this field beneath the surface as there are known projects. Expect to learn more in 2016. Last […]

In rural Holden, Missouri, roughly 50 miles southeast of Kansas City, is a 10-acre island of recreational aviation in a vast ocean of corn and soybeans. The pole barns adjacent to its 1000-foot grass strip look like those on neighboring farms, until you look inside. The hulking gray lathe, milling machine, and drill press don’t […]

A 30-year-old man is in jail after causing up to $30,000 worth of damage to a former military aircraft that he thought belonged to Microsoft founding partner Paul Allen. The man was spotted inside the fence at Arlington Municipal Airport, north of Seattle, allegedly breaking pieces off the exterior of a Dornier Alpha Jet, a […]

With the exception of tiny squiggles up and down, the general aviation fatal accident rate remains stubbornly at about 1.0/100,000 hours. That’s down a little from a decade ago, when it was 1.28 and down a lot from the early to mid-1970s, when it was more than 2.0. In GA, we tend to resist the […]

Proposals for new autopilot upgrades can be shocking. Even entry-level wing-leveling systems start at $10,000, not including installation. But that won’t buy much. Higher-end models with add-on options can easily snowball a project to $40,000. That’s roughly the cost of an average engine replacement—or an average Skyhawk. For years, S-Tec (now Cobham Avionics) has dominated […]

What to make of Mooney’s new M20V Acclaim Ultra? It’s at once more than I ever expected and less than I might have wished. Then again, in this business, the survivors learn that the orbits of expectation rarely intersect with those of reality and we all know about wishes, horses and beggars. But give the […]